420 Comments

Aw c'mon Joe, why don't you just concede the general election to Blankenship?

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"I do not believe the president would ask me to do that.""oh dear lord, that's not what we're asking!"

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"I do not believe the president would order me to do that.""And that speaks volumes for just how unqualified you are to run the Central Intelligence Agency."

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This is a mess. Trump wants credit for having the first woman as the head of the CIA, and if she's not confirmed, he'll call the Democrats fake feminists. I can deal with that.

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Saw a just-able-to-fly baby burrowing owl in the desert yesterday. Cute.

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I'm waiting for the Congresscritter who'll just yell, "Answer the fucking question!"

Edit: Oh, it was Collins. Of course she didn't follow up.

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Thing is, Haspel's resume makes her eminently qualified for the job.

JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION, YOU IDIOT! You ought to be smart enough to answer it in a way that makes everyone content, and gets you the job. "Given the moral repugnance of torture, there had better be a damn good reason for needing to do it. Something with lives at immediate risk, perhaps. I would hope we would never be in a situation where we had to resort to it."

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It's all euphemisms and plausible deniability.The preznit would never ask the CIA to waterboard someone. They would say use any means necessary or all available options to obtain the information. It's Enhanced Interrogation, just what that Enhanced _is_ gets left to the professionals."clear and present danger" for assassination.Search and Destroy became Sweep and Clear in 'Nam. Fox News is an entertainment channel with no legal obligation to tell the truth.It's was a stupid question that got a stupid answer.A better one would be, Without direct Presidential direction would your CIA continue to operate torture blacksites outside of US territory as they have under your personal oversight?

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"I would bring back waterboarding," Trump told Saturday night's debate audience in Manchester, N.H. [Feb 6, 2016]. "And I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding."

Several in the audience clapped. See youtube and articles.

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Is 'past history' like 'also, too'?

/s

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" Enhanced interrogation " = torture. Let's not forget the two CIA Doctor flunkies who wrote a whole manual on how to do it the most terribly. Reports have shown the Intel it reveals is often unreliable. As in maybe suspects aren't that clear or coherent during and after days of sleep deprivation, waterboarding, head in toilet, vicious beatings, & much , much worse....abhorrent

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A normal, rational president who cares about liability and recognizes that actions have consequences would never directly order the head of the CIA to waterboard someone. Trump? I certainly wouldn't put it past him.

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Oh so you are getting a known torturer as head cos shes possibly a chick because the CIA needed to be more - woke? Fabulous.

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A feminist does not believe in appointing an unqualified woman to head the CIA just because she is a woman. Besides being just wrong. it would set the movement back as her incompetence would be used to block a future competent woman.

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The Trump administration couldn't find anybody better qualified? Or even equally qualified, but without a torture background? Or are they just testing the GOP to see how sleazy and slimy and low their standards have become to let their pet animals get their criminal agenda passed? I think we may be in deep shit here.

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Nope.

rtpoeman • 4 hours ago Thing is, Haspel's resume makes her eminently qualified for the job.JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION, YOU IDIOT! You ought to be smart enough to answer it in a way that makes everyone content, and gets you the job. "Given the moral repugnance of torture, there had better be a damn good reason for needing to do it. Something with lives at immediate risk, perhaps. I would hope we would never be in a situation where we had to resort to it."

As Stonekettle noted on his Twitter feed, slavery was very effective, which is why it was used in Dixie for so long. Does that make slavery moral?

Morals aren't morals if you can throw them out even when it's really inconvenient.

We executed Japanese war criminals who used the torture technique of waterboarding. There is no context in which torture is acceptable.

Moreover, if the USA holds that "well, we've got some immediate need here" then we cede the moral high ground to every other nation in the world which would use the same argument.

While Senator McCain may not be well enough to cast his vote against Torture Mom, there is a reason he called her out today and said "no thanks."

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