Big Manly Former CIA Chief Mansplains: Sen. Dianne Feinstein Too 'Emotional' About Torture

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden said on Fox News Sunday, on Fox News, on Sunday, that in advocating the public release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on torture, Sen. Dianne Feinstein may have been too "emotional," and maybe even hysterical, because who knows with ladies, right? Sometimes they just fly off the handle instead of being logical and dispassionate about a topic like torturing human beings.

Hayden said that Feinstein

"wanted a report so scathing that it would ensure that an un-American brutal program of detention interrogation would never again be considered or permitted."

"That motivation for the report may show deep emotional feeling on the part of the senator, but I don't think it leads you to an objective report," Hayden said.

Fox host Christ Wallace asked Hayden to explain his remarks:

“Forgive me because you and I both know Senator Feinstein,” Wallace said. “I have the highest regard for her. You’re saying you think she was emotional in these conclusions?”

Oddly enough, Hayden didn't directly reply to the question, possibly because it would not be manly.

Hayden acknowledged that he hadn't seen the report, which criticizes the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program for using excessive force and for being less effective at gathering intelligence than other non-abusive interrogation techniques. He also admitted that information that led to the location of Osama bin Laden was obtained from a detainee before he was even turned over to the CIA, which tortured him anyway but got no useful information from those interrogations. One might almost get the impression that the movie Zero Dark Thirty was not a 100% accurate source of information about the efficacy of the CIA's torture program.

Even so, Hayden said, he still thinks that torture was pretty darn valuable, in a non-emotional, perfectly logical sort of way, because "the totality of information, including information from this program" helped to find bin Laden. After all, the CIA wouldn't repeatedly torture people if it wasn't working, would they? Or at least, if they didn't think that just a little more torture might work.

There was something in there we were going to say about destroying American values in order to save them, but we guess we got too emotional to remember it.

[ HuffPo / ThinkProgress ]

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