The Phony Debate Over Haspel and CIA Torture

The media has once again played a false card. This time it's in reference to their coverage of the Gina Haspel nomination. Now director of the CIA, Haspel was and is a controversial figure due to her sadistic reputation and participation in the Bush administration's post-9/11 torture schemes. 

The media has presented a false controversy. Is torture compatible with the values of the United States? It's presented as an interlude and anomaly, some kind of strange episode that deviated from the norms of US conduct.

Nothing could be further from the truth. There are some differences in what happened after 9/11, but the media will not dwell on them. The US at first attempted to hide what they were doing but by the time the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in 2004, there was a public debate and the White House and other government, military and intelligence figures came to the defense of the policy while others denounced it. The White House was formally and openly involved. It was revealed as a policy. That was somewhat new.

As far as the realities of US involvement in torture, that's all but old hat. The Phoenix Program run by the CIA in Vietnam was a wide-scale operation focused on torture and assassination. The CIA operations division has been involved in such projects for decades and has been involved in collaborating with and training proxy forces abroad. The CIA's role in torture is well established and the record is long, a dark chronicle if ever there was one.

What does Haspel represent? Many things. First, she represents a director from the operations side of the agency. Most directors do not come from that house of darkest deeds. The director position is somewhat political and gets a fair bit of light shone upon it. Haspel was denounced by many connected to the agency and not a few deep state dissidents and yet Congress played its traditional rubber stamp role.

It pretended concern and the Democrats made a show of opposition but they like their Republican colleagues are already on record for supporting the CIA and its various programmes. Men like Brennan and Clapper who could and should be held in contempt of congress and should even by US standards be indicted, are esteemed, even by many on the so-called Left of the Democratic Party.

Haspel's directorship means the acceptance is now open and the debate is over. Congress can pretend the US has moved on, but anyone paying attention will know better. We've seen this movie before. These practices were supposed to have stopped in the 1970's but by the 1980's we learned the same old games were being played. The 1990's were a time of confession, reflection and pretended penance even while the mantra of progress ruled the day. A new chapter had begun, past sins could be acknowledged but it was time to move on. Obama would later try to play this card as he facilitated the cover-up for the Bush administration.

This illusion-period of the 1990's lasted at best a few years and by 2001 all pretense at post-Watergate reform was abandoned. It was as if the 1950's had returned, an era of sinister immorality known as something of a golden age for those in the Deep State.

Congress has basically announced that the Constitution is dead. Additionally they have all but tacitly announced the document and its values are by no means universal and those connected to the Deep State may flout it with impunity. Haspel joins the ranks of Brennan, Clapper and a line of figures going back to William Colby, Richard Helms and Alan Dulles, monsters and sadists all.

The Democrats additionally came to the rescue in trying a game of bait-and-switch, tying in the Haspel nomination with the McCarthyite 'Me Too' campaign and succeeded in winning over many in the middle class who remain hostile to Trump and his policies. Haspel's nomination became about feminism and whether or not she was being 'picked on' because she's a woman.

She may be female, but she's no lady.

Others tried to make hay out of her credentials vis-à-vis the Anti-Russia campaign. The media is ever so subtly beginning to acknowledge that the War on Terror is all but over and the eternal/global war (launched by 9/11) has now shifted to Great Power struggles and a new Cold War. The official policy of the Pentagon has already acknowledged this but publically it is only whispered. They do not want a debate on all that has happened since 9/11. The legislative and social coup that took place in its wake will continue and it's by no means done. In fact the censorship programmes and the appropriation of social media are in their early stages.

The lame voices from the Left offer weak protest about American values. Surely they're joking. Haspel and her deeds in many ways represent the very core of American values. To suggest that American represents something else is pure myth. The debate is false. It is instead about a narrative, an image that America wishes to present to the world.

America has almost since its inception represented raw power, conquest and insatiability and woe to those who dare to oppose it. The debates over agrarian isolation were dead within a generation of its founding. The die was cast. America would be the new world empire, destined to rule the old. America's legacy is not one of freedom but of blood. Monied segments of its own populace are kept ignorant, happy and distracted but most of America's tale has been one of hardship and exploitation. Today, it is decadent and very dangerous.

The laughable part about this is.... no one, and I mean no one believes the freedom/values narrative, except the American electorate and its myriad propagandists in the media and academia.

Haspel in that sense is the perfect 'man' for the job.

Of course the most sickening part about all of this is the Christian and particularly Evangelical segment of the population. Many of them champion these figures and indeed Haspel's predecessor Mike Pompeo is a professing Christian, a conservative Evangelical. While in that capacity he called for torture and assassination and now as Secretary of State is helping to lead the charge in pushing the United States toward war with Iran.

These are sick and evil people, enemies of Christ and all His Kingdom represents... and so are those who support such evil and approve of their deeds.

But many, blinded to these realities will instead become bogged down in false debates and in contests over who can tell the most convincing lies. America will go the way of all beasts but what of the harlot 'Church' that has partaken of its sins and celebrated its deeds? It too will be destroyed by the very beast it helped to create. So goes the pattern.