Moral Compass

Flopping Aces ^ | 05-10-18 | Wordsmith

[Starman417]

“My moral compass is strong, I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral even if it was technically legal -- I would absolutely not permit it.”

-Gina Haspel

Gina Haspel, when asked at her Senate confirmation hearing yesterday about President Trump's previously stated idea that torture "absolutely works,":  "I don't believe that torture works."

Later, Kamala Harris used her opportunity to question Haspel with a bit of grandstanding and moral posturing:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5DdyHtqCwF0

"One question I've not heard you previously answer"?  Well....In one sense Haspel did answer it when the question was framed as "torture"; but Harris was smart enough to reframe it as "the previous interrogation techniques were immoral"?  For so many of the torture alarmists, they see the two as one and the same thing and that "enhanced interrogation technique" is a euphemism for "torture".  Like Bush, Rumsfeld, James Mitchell and the CIA interrogators, they don't condone torture.  EITs however?

Good on Haspel for not falling for the "yes" or "no" trap.  It's deceptive and dishonest.  If Kamala Harris had framed her question, "Do you believe torture is immoral?", Haspel would have answered "yes". How do we know this? Because earlier in the Hearing, she already stated it.

Perhaps one day Harris will be put into a position where she will have to answer a "yes" or "no" question like:  "Do you find it immoral to kill unborn babies, 'yes' or 'no'?"  See the inherent problem in this?  So Kamala Harris is against torture- or more accurately enhanced interrogation techniques applied to terrorists; yet has no qualms about supporting late term abortions?  There's a moral disconnect somewhere in there.

How is the moral compass of Democrats who confirmed John Brennan (the #4 "spy" at the Agency when EITs were called up, and so in a position much higher up the totem pole than Haspel at the time) under President Obama?  Yet were already raising political manure over her nomination, before the hearing? I suppose one difference is the attention President Trump has drawn to this with his past statements on waterboarding and torture.  If he hadn't, then only the Code Pink clowns would have shown their consistency colors by showing up for vocal opposition to Haspel's nomination.

If giving CIA swim lessons could have prevented 3,000 innocent lives from perishing horrible, painful deaths, how is refusing to do so a morally superior position?   Which way is the moral compass pointing in that scenario?

“You know, some day your government is going to turn on you.”

-Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Senator Diane Feinstein, architect of the 2014 SSCI highly partisan, ideologically-agenda-driven "torture report":

On May 26, 2002, Feinstein was quoted in the New York Times saying that the attacks of 9/11 were a real awakening and that it would no longer be “business as usual.” The attacks, she said, let us know “that the threat is profound” and “that we have to do some things that historically we have not wanted to do to protect ourselves.”

Senator John Rockefeller:

[technically right]

Here’s the comeback I would have loved to have heard, “Senator Harris, here’s a hypothetical for you. One day the Director of the CIA I have learned from creditable sources that a terrorist organization has managed to bring a nuclear device into the LA metropolitan area and it will be detonated within 24 hours. We have an individual in custody that we believe can tell us where that nuclear device is. Now we’ve asked this individual several times what if he has any knowledge of this. He keeps telling us to get f*cked. We’ve even asked him pretty please to tell us and if he doesn’t we’re going to send him to bed without supper. He still tells us to get f*cked. So Senator as CIA Director my next move is to give you a call and ask you what the f*ck should we do next because when the bomb goes off you’re the one that’s going to be responsible”

[vpintheak]

Anyone who is tough on criminals shakes leftards to the core.

[MagnoliaB]

Kamala Harris is very near the top of the list of ‘Most Horrid People on This Planet’. I’ve heard she might run for president next election.