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Thread: Rand Opposes Pompeo and Haspel

  1. #31
    John Kiriakou
    I’m sure that’s true for some. But many of the rest of us who knew and worked with Haspel at the CIA called her “Bloody Gina.”The CIA will not let me repeat her résumé or the widely reported specifics of how her work fit into the agency’s torture program, calling such details “currently and properly classified.

    But I can say that

    Haspel was a protege of and chief of staff for Jose Rodriguez, the CIA’s notorious former deputy director for operations and former director of the Counterterrorism Center. And that Rodriguez eventually assigned Haspel to order the detruction of videotaped evidence of the torture of Abu Zubaida. The Justice Department investigated, but no one was ever charged in connection with the incident.


    CIA officers and psychologists under contract to the agency began torturing Abu Zubaida on Aug. 1, 2002. The techniques were supposed to be incremental, starting with an open-palmed slap to the belly or the face. But the operatives where he was held decided to start with the toughest method. They waterboarded Abu Zubaida 83 times.

    They later subjected him to sleep deprivation; they kept him locked in a large dog cage for weeks at a time; they locked him in a coffin-size box and, knowing that he had an irrational fear of insects, put bugs in it with him.


    Rodriguez would later tell reporters
    that the torture worked and that Abu Zubaida provided actionable intelligence that disrupted attacks and saved American lives.

    We know, thanks to the
    Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture and the personal testimony of FBI interrogator Ali Soufan , that this was false.



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  3. #32
    loveshiscountry
    Member

    Quote Originally Posted by nikcers View Post
    I stand by my heroes statement, Haspel is a tyrant who loves to torture, I don't care if they want to claim she wasn't the person because that information is classified, I say she did it, but it was classified so they claim "it never happened". You can tell by the interview when the fox anchor asks the guy if she was even at the facility, and he wont even answer that question.

    Agreed. All I said was the claim of her being there is incorrect and not that it matters as to why shes a bad choice. It's about her being okay with a torture policy that matters. It's always about policy.



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  5. #33

    https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/975135258134876165
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
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  6. #34
    Rand taking a lot of heat over this.
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  7. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by eleganz View Post
    Rand taking a lot of heat over this.
    He might be playing a bad cop.

  8. #36
    Rand Paul: Why I’ll Fight Gina Haspel and Mike Pompeo Nominations
    In a TAC exclusive, the Kentucky senator explains why we can't afford any more war-happy neocons.
    By Rand Paul • March 16, 2018

    Since President Trump took office, our country finally seems to be heading in the right direction. In just the past year, the American people have seen enormous tax cuts, more judges appointed who take the Constitution seriously, relief from the massive regulatory state, and an economy rapidly gaining strength and offering greater opportunities for those seeking to turn their dreams into reality.

    But when it comes to our place on the world stage, we are at a crossroads. We can continue to build on our recent successes by reaffirming America’s role as a trusted, powerful nation guided by principle. Or we can throw it all away by allowing neocon interventionists to infiltrate our leadership and make America the purveyor of destruction.

    For decades, we have failed to bring about real peace thanks to a foreign policy guided by the idea that war and intervention are the answers. “Blow up and rebuild” has been the battle cry of those determined to keep us perpetually in conflict.

    It was the battle cry of Hillary Clinton, who supported military intervention in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. I supported President Trump during his campaign because he advocated for less military intervention. He opposed the Iraq War. He acknowledged that nation-building doesn’t work. He understood the damage previous foreign policy missteps have caused, including helping to strengthen ISIS.

    I want to continue making America great again. That won’t happen if we give power-hungry neocons the reins to our nation’s foreign policy.

    People already distrust the CIA. So why on earth has this administration picked someone to run the Agency who was instrumental in running a place where people were tortured and then covered it up afterwards?

    Multiple undisputed accounts have detailed how Gina Haspel not only ran a CIA “black site” in Thailand but also destroyed video evidence of torture.

    The retraction of one anecdote from a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter doesn’t absolve her of wrongdoing and certainly doesn’t negate the rest of the facts, which remain the same. Those actions alone should preclude her from ever running the CIA.

    Unfortunately, Haspel is just one of many potential neoconservatives being considered to serve in our country’s top leadership roles. The current CIA director and the president’s pick to become the next secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has defended torture in the past.

    Further, he’s been a stalwart defender of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) unconstitutional spying programs and has even written in support of expanding the information government can collect.

    I could not support appointing him as CIA director in 2017, and for those same reasons, I will oppose his nomination to be our chief diplomat now.

    Just as troublesome are recent news reports that John Bolton is being considered for a senior administration position. Just recently, Bolton advocated for a preemptive strike against North Korea. If he had his way, our nation would be embroiled in dozens of armed conflicts in every corner of the world.
    ...
    More: http://www.theamericanconservative.c...s-nominations/
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

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    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  9. #37
    I simply do not believe she should hold the post to which she has been nominated. - Rand Paul
    Why I’m Against Gina Haspel-

    Trump’s nominee to run the CIA is complicit in torture. She shouldn’t be in charge of an agency that already has problems with accountability.

    By SEN. RAND PAUL
    March 18, 2018


    Over the past several days, there has been an increasingly granular debate about the degree of Gina Haspel’s participation in the torturing of detainees at the CIA’s Thailand “black site,” with neocons going out of their way to try to defend the president’s choice to run the agency in the wake of Mike Pompeo’s departure for Foggy Bottom.
    Some details may be disputed, but it remains true that Haspel ran a secret center in Thailand where prisoners were tortured.

    There is no question that during her career, Haspel participated in and helped develop the program that our own government has labeled torture. Though there have been the typical suggestions that she was “simply following orders,” Glenn Carle, a former CIA interrogator, has described her as “one of the architects, designers, implementers and one of the top two managers of the [Enhanced Interrogation Techniques program] and a true believer, by all accounts, in the ‘Global War in Terror’ paradigm.”


    This does not sound like someone who was simply “following orders.” This sounds like someone who was giving them, which I would argue is far worse.

    Nor is it debatable that she was present in Thailand when Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was waterboarded three times in late 2002.

    Further, multiple accounts have discussed her involvement in destroying video documentation of the torture program. Think about that for a moment. She helped destroy the very evidence of this program, and people tell us we have no reason for concern?


    Direct participation in the program itself would be disqualifying enough for me, but appointing someone who also helped push for destroying evidence of that program to run one of the most powerful organizations in the world should not be acceptable to Congress.


    At the end of the day, does this sound like what you would want from someone in a position of incredible power—much of which is hidden from the public? Without hesitation, I say no.

    Those who run our government have a duty to the American people to ensure that their organizations are free of corruption. We are a nation of laws, where transparency and accountability are supposed to be paramount.

    I don’t always agree with my Arizona colleague, Sen. John McCain, but his December 2014 floor statement regarding the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report still rings true today. He said then:

    Our enemies act without conscience. We must not. This executive summary of the Committee’s report makes clear that acting without conscience isn’t necessary, it isn’t even helpful, in winning this strange and long war we’re fighting. We should be grateful to have that truth affirmed.

    Now, let us reassert the contrary proposition: that is it essential to our success in this war that we ask those who fight it for us to remember at all times that they are defending a sacred ideal of how nations should be governed and conduct their relations with others – even our enemies.


    Unless Haspel’s tenure in charge of waterboarding is declassified, the exact details of her actions will be argued back and forth.


    What is known is that Haspel participated in a program that was antithetical to the ideals of this country. She destroyed evidence in defiance of our ideals.

    I simply do not believe she should hold the post to which she has been nominated.

  10. #38
    Reminder to all the haters, Rand didn't have to do this. He could've just ignored it and kept his favor with the GOP. You all know how the "base" feels about torture.
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  11. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by eleganz View Post
    Reminder to all the haters, Rand didn't have to do this. He could've just ignored it and kept his favor with the GOP. You all know how the "base" feels about torture.
    Randal always does a great job of portraying his objections as his way of supporting candidate trump and opposing the nevertrumpers..

  12. #40
    "Gina Haspel and the CIA torturers broke no laws because Eric Holder never prosecuted them. Checkmate libtards." -- Dana Perino (not a direct quote)



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  14. #41
    Mike Pompeo Q&A at a neoconservative conference (FDD):

    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

    Proponent of real science.
    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  15. #42

  16. #43
    Quote Originally Posted by eleganz View Post
    Reminder to all the haters, Rand didn't have to do this. He could've just ignored it and kept his favor with the GOP. You all know how the "base" feels about torture.
    The base either love torture, believe its ugly but works, or flat out don't care.

  17. #44
    Rand still wants to increase legal immigration. I really don't. Everywhere I go there are too many people. It seems to me that freedom decreases as population increases.

  18. #45
    Rand on right now. (just before 1pm)

    https://www.c-span.org/video/?443693...mation-hearing
    Last edited by Valli6; 04-12-2018 at 11:02 AM.

  19. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by Valli6 View Post
    Rand on right now. (just before 1pm)

    https://www.c-span.org/video/?443693...mation-hearing
    He starts at 2:38:22 of the full video here:
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?443693...on-hearing&vod

  20. #47


    Rand mentioned in the intro segment and interviewed at 5:34

  21. #48
    Rand laid out an uncompromising constitutionalist viewpoint and painted Pompeo as a warmongering hypocrite. His dad wouldn't have done it any differently. Pompeo looked very uncomfortable.
    Partisan politics, misleading or emotional bill titles, and 4D chess theories are manifestations of the same lie—that the text of the Constitution, the text of legislation, and plain facts do not matter; what matters is what you want to believe. From this comes hypocrisy. And where hypocrisy thrives, virtue recedes. Without virtue, liberty dies. - Justin Amash, March 2018



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  23. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by Raginfridus View Post
    The base either love torture, believe its ugly but works, or flat out don't care.
    It's mostly don't care, our society in large teaches us to value life only when its part of our tribe. A lot of them do care but they are forced into believing that they don't care- it creates an ambiguity over morality. Its not enough to pretend to be a moral society- and you shouldn't believe something just because you want to believe it. You gotta have someone who plays the part though of a madman and I give Trump props, if he is putting on a show, it looks real. Only Nixon could go to China, but only Trump could go to China with the nuclear football have them try to wrestle the nuclear football from the secret services hands and then sell them steaks. It probably wasn't even the real nuclear football, just an old briefcase he had filled with take out ads and newspaper.

  24. #50

  25. #51
    script
    PAUL: Thanks for your testimony and thanks for going through this grueling enterprise and your willingness to serve the country. You discussed with Senator Kaine a little bit about whether or not the President has the authority to bomb Assad's forces or installations in Syria and you mention historically, well we have done it in the past.

    I don't think that's a complete enough answer. I mean my question would be do you think it's constitutional? Does the President have the constitutional authority to bomb Assad's forces? Does he have the authority absent congressional action to bomb Assad's forces or instillations?


    POMPEO: Senator, as I -- I think I said this to Senator Kaine, I'm happy to repeat my view on this. Those decisions are weighted. Every place we can, we should work alongside Congress to get that but yes I believe the President has the domestic authority to do that. I don't think -- I don't think that has been disputed by republicans or democrats throughout an extended period of time.


    PAUL: Actually it was disputed mostly by our founding fathers who believed they gave that authority to Congress and actually they're uniformly opposed to the executive branch having that power. In fact, Madison wrote very specifically, he said, "The executive branch is the branch most prone to war. Therefore, we have with studied care vested that authority into the legislature".


    So the fact that we have in the past done this doesn't make it constitutional and I would say that I take objection to the idea that the president can go to war when he wants, where he wants. With regard to Afghanistan, some have argued that it's time to get out of Afghanistan. What do you think?


    POMPEO: Senator, I think the course of action that President Trump has taken there is the right one. It's -- it is humble in its mission. It understands that we've been there an awfully long time. It has an objective of leaving, but is not prepared to leave until such time as we can put America in a position where we can greatly diminish the threat to our homeland from terrorism that may emanate from there.


    And with an effort alongside that which will be required to achieve that first objective to create, I want to be humble, more stability in Afghanistan.


    PAUL: Actually, the the president has been very specific at times on this and he said, "It is time to get out of Afghanistan. We are building roads and bridges and schools for people that hate us. It is not in our national interest". That's a direct quote. So, the president said it was time to get out. It sounds like you say it's time to stay. Is that a difference in opinion?


    Some here are worried that you're going to be too much in agreement with the president in action (ph) or are you going to be in too much in disagreement with the president. One of the things I have liked about the president is he says it is time to come home. Let's declare a victory and come home, but it sounds to me like you were saying we need to stay.


    POMPEO: Senator, it sounds like I have a Goldilocks problem, too close, too far, different porridge for each. Senator, the president also said in the summer at Fort Meyer that he was committed to the mission that I outlined there. That's consistent with what secretary of state has been trying to do diplomatically.


    It's consistent with what Secretary Mattis has been trying to do by supporting Afghan forces in the country. I believe and I share the president's view that we have a continued role there. And while I want to get out in the same way you do, I have friends who are serving there. I've had friends, as I know you would, who have been injured. We're not a place yet where it's appropriate to do so.


    PAUL: Here's the problem, is are we ever going to be at that place? I mean, so you've got people, the administration yourself now saying in your written questions back to me that there's not a military solution. So, we're sending our G.I.'s out there to risk life and limb when there is not military solution hoping that we - sounds a little bit like Vietnam.


    Hoping that we get to a little position, let's bomb the crap out of them to get them to negotiate and we'll get to a little better negotiation. In the end it was no better in Vietnam. It was still a disaster in the very end. And a lot of people wasted their lives in the end for that.


    I think that there is no military mission and when you admit there's no military mission it is hard for me to square with your desire still to stay. And, we say oh we want to leave but when, we've been there 18 years. I think we should declare victory and come home. I think we won the battle. We did. We literally did win.


    There's nobody left alive who plotted to attack us on 9/11. I've asked people repeatedly, tell me the names of those left alive in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, anywhere in the world. We're now sending people to war who weren't even born when 9/11 was. And, every administration comes, not just republican, democrat.


    They come and say oh well it's, you know, it's just fine. We're going to keep fighting these wars and it's like it has something to do with 9/11. No, it has nothing to do with 9/11. everybody around the world is - that is a radical Islamist we now are at war with because we said we got the permission to go at 9/11.


    But when you were in Congress you had a little bit different position, you know. Your position with Libya was that we should get authorization. Your position in 2013 was also - you wrote an Op Ed with Tom Cotton saying well we should give the president the authority he needs to go into Syria not because you were like me that we shouldn't get involved in another war because you were eager to get involved and you wanted to give the president permission saying please, President Trump, let's go to war in Syria.


    But I think we need to think these things through and we need to not be so carte blanche that the Constitution does give just carte blanche permission for the president to do whatever he wants. Do you think the Iraq war was a mistake?


    POMPEO: Senator, I was running a machine shop in Kansas at the time so I don't have a contemporaneous view that I expressed.


    PAUL: No opinions back then? How about opinions now?


    POMPEO: I may well have had an opinion.


    PAUL: Now, was there ...


    POMPEO: But, no, my opinion now is, look, we clearly had - we had bad intelligence. I've been one of the few CIA directors who's been willing to say we get it wrong. In spite of all the enormous resources ...


    PAUL: But it's not just bad intelligence.


    POMPEO: But we did have - we did have bad intelligence.


    PAUL: We did geopolitically the wrong thing. We got rid of the enemy of Iran. We emboldened Iran. We made it worse, we brought chaos to the Middle East. We are still suffering the ramifications and repercussion of the Iraq war but your president said it very clearly.


    He says the Iraq war was the single worst decision ever made. So, once again, I'm concerned that you won't be supporting the president. That you will be influencing him in a way that I think his inclinations are actually better than many of his advisors. That the Iraq war was a mistake that we need to come home from Afghanistan.


    He was against being involved in Syria at many times in his career. So think he does have good instincts and my main concern is that will you be one who will listen to what the president actually wants instead of being someone who advocates for us staying forever in Afghanistan.


    Another Iraq war, bombing Syria without permission. So, these are the advice you will give and I guess that's my biggest concern with your nomination is that I don't think it reflects the millions of people who voted for President Trump who actually voted for him because they thought it'd be different.


    That it wouldn't be the traditional bipartisan consensus to bomb everywhere and be everywhere around the world. So, that's my main concern and I just want to make sure that that's loud and clear to everyone that is my concern.

  26. #52

  27. #53
    Long before Donald Trump ever nominated Gina Haspel to run the CIA, a memoir from a former CIA top attorney contained a line with the power to do serious damage to her chances.
    Haspel’s informal nomination ran into immediate jeopardy last month over her 2002 supervision of the agency’s first secret black-site prison, located in Thailand, where two early detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, were tortured. (She directly ran the black site, though after Zubaydah’s most intense period of torture that year.)
    But in his 2014 book, John Rizzo, a longtime senior CIA lawyer, indicated that Haspel was responsible for the incommunicado detention and torture not of two men, but of dozens, potentially. Former intelligence officials interviewed by The Daily Beast have portrayed Haspel’s experience similarly.
    Rizzo, in his memoir, Company Man, looked back on his time in a Langley controversy he likened to “a big turd dumped on my desk”: the fateful November 2005 decision, made by Haspel’s then-boss Jose Rodriguez with her support, to destroy 92 videotapes depicting the 2002 torture of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri.
    Rizzo wrote that Rodriguez’s then-chief of staff—who was Haspel, though he didn’t name her, as her identity was then an official secret—was deeply involved in the agency’s torture program.
    “Jose installed as his chief of staff an officer from the Counterterrorist Center who had previously run the interrogation program,” Rizzo wrote.

    That’s a substantially broader declaration than the history already dogging Haspel, the agency’s deputy director, whom the White House formally nominated as its next CIA director late on Tuesday.

    More at: https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-ci...gation-program
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  28. #54
    This seems like a pretty big deal. Trump was leaning on him in the press. I was hoping he would stay a no but thought there was a decent chance he would use the North Korea talks as an out.


  29. #55

  30. #56








    I don't like this one bit. I don't think Rand actually believes these "assurances" coming from Trump and Pompeo. They must have made a deal with him. The question is, is the deal more in Rand's favor or Trump's favor.



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  32. #57

  33. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by milgram View Post
    Rand still wants to increase legal immigration. I really don't. Everywhere I go there are too many people. It seems to me that freedom decreases as population increases.
    This works as planned. The mental waves of the sheep get synchronized. I am sure somebody posted this already.

  34. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by milgram View Post
    Oh boy
    This is good. Senator Paul is raising in the ranks of "people we can rely upon". Or at least that's what he thinks. LOL.

  35. #60
    It looked like Pompeo would make it because of a Dem or two. Rand looks ridiculous for flipping after making such a big scene.

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