Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/10/gina-haspell.html
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All nations’ intelligence agencies (and armies) break FOREIGN laws because espionage (and invasion) isn’t legal. That’s par for the course.
It seems we need to be reminded of this from time to time. The CIA does not enforce laws, it’s business is to break them (for mumble mumble noble reasons). Is it any wonder they can’t play nice with legitimate law enforcement agencies like the FBI?
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To me the biggest reveal during the hearing was that the person who decided what parts of her record are classified or not was someone named Gina Haspel.
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This is an Obama failure coming home to roost. He (and the goddamn cowards in Congress) made the decision to hold no one accountable, to change nothing, and to collectively wag their fingers at those rascals torturing people in in our names and tell them they’d better knock it off quick or else they get the glowering of a lifetime.
Now, fifteen years after, the people who either lacked the moral courage to stop things like torture or directed it themselves are still in charge of these agencies, and will be for a generation. Good lord, just look at the euphemistic use of “enhanced interrogation” that still gets thrown around in the hearings. We missed our one and only opportunity as a country to come to terms with what we did, and we should be ashamed (if we were capable of shame, that is).
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But of course -
I think we should start with him.
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Go Fuck Yourself Mr Cheney.
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Yep. Ditto for the banks.
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To be fair, that applied to James Comey as well (most of the memos he sent out to people weren’t classified because he decided whether to classify them.)
But yeah, there’s a serious issue here about accountability; saying that e.g. Congress can have closed doors sessions is not a sufficient safeguard really.
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That’s quite clever, took me a few seconds to realize it was a glass ceiling.
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Yup. Same thing with the banking crisis. There was a teaching moment there, and the lesson that was learned was, there will be no consequences.
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We hanged Nazis who used this defense.
Roger That!
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That sounds like standard procedure to me.
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If the CIA is going to inculcate a tradition of respect for the rule of law
CIA: “Shit, why start now?”
Yeah, though it would have taken some serious guts to actually hold people accountable, especially as it would have gone all the way up to former occupants of the White House. It would have set a precedent that would have seriously pissed off the CIA and others. All the people bloviating about the “deep state” now - we would have seen some actual blowback from some of the shadowier parts of the state had that happened. People should have been held accountable, but I can kind of understand why no one did it, and I can sympathize as to why Obama, who was already getting a shit-ton of crap for nothing more than being a black guy, didn’t want to be the one to bring that down on his head (and probably wasn’t the ideal person to do it, politically).
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Gina’s not worried. There’s this little do-dad:
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It’s really hard for me to think we’re not on the verge of multiple black swan scenarios converging maybe very very soon. There are consequences to this stuff, and getting it so wrong! And look at how bubbled the market is right now. Good times ahead, ha!
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My cynical/paranoid side is working overtime:
Gina’s dubious past would be perfect for Trump who could control her and through her cause the CIA to back off on Russia.
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Reminder that, vile as she is, Haspel is not the problem with the CIA.
The entire institution is rotten, root to branch. And it has been for a very long time.
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Anyone who thinks we ever stopped torturing prisoners is deluding themselves. Remember, WE are the Evil Empire these days.
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