Poll of the Day > Senate confirms Gina Haspel as first female CIA director.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/17/612030652/hold-hold-hold-senate-confirms-gina-haspel-as-cia-director

The Senate on Thursday confirmed Gina Haspel as CIA director, making her the first woman to lead the spy agency despite the controversy surrounding her role in the waterboarding program.

The Senate vote of 54-45 in favor of Haspel came mostly, but not entirely, along party lines. She needed support from several Democratic senators to win confirmation.

Her confirmation effectively completes President Trump's recent shakeup of his national security and foreign policy teams. In recent weeks, John Bolton became the national security adviser, Mike Pompeo became secretary of state, and Haspel now takes over for Pompeo at CIA.

In addition to being the CIA's first female director, Haspel is also the first career CIA officer to lead the agency since William Colby in the 1970s.

Haspel, 61, is widely respected in the intelligence community. Since joining the CIA in 1985, just a few years out of college, she has held some 20 separate jobs at the agency, including seven postings abroad.

The CIA said those foreign postings include Europe, Eurasia and Africa, though it has declined to name the countries, saying that's classified information.

Haspel was undercover for her first 32 years at the agency, a status lifted just last year when she became deputy director to Pompeo.

Trump then picked Pompeo to be secretary of state in March, and chose Haspel to replace him as the spy chief.

Haspel immediately came under intense scrutiny for two specific episodes in her long career.

One was in 2002, when she ran a black site prison in Thailand where officers carried out waterboarding and other harsh tactics to extract information out of suspected al-Qaida militants. The other was in 2005, when she was based at CIA headquarters outside Washington and wrote a cable calling for videotapes of the waterboardings to be destroyed.

Democratic senators grilled Haspel on these events at her confirmation hearing before the Senate intelligence committee on May 9.

In several sharp exchanges with the senators, Haspel said she would not initiate any new detention and interrogation programs as CIA director. But she did not disavow the previous program, which ran from 2002 to 2008.

After that hearing, several senators said they needed additional information from Haspel. In a letter on Monday, she went beyond what she said in her public testimony.

"With the benefit of hindsight and my experience as a senior agency leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the CIA should have undertaken," she wrote in a letter to Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat on the intelligence committee.

Shortly after her letter became public Tuesday, three Democratic senators, including Warner, announced their support for Haspel.

"I believe she is someone who can and will stand up to the president if ordered to do something illegal or immoral like a return to torture," Warner said in a statement.

Haspel needed Democratic support to win confirmation because two Republican senators, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jeff Flake of Arizona, opposed her for her role in the interrogation program. John McCain of Arizona also opposed Haspel, but is receiving treatment for brain cancer and was not present.

What fucking democrats voted to approve miss torture?

Well this was a miss fortune.
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She lead a torture site and destroyed the evidence to avoid going to jail. But hey....first female CIA director!
Gender identity politics won out over basic morality, huzzah!

BlackScythe0 posted...

What fucking democrats voted to approve miss torture?

Ones in Trump Country, worried about their re-elections.
Apparently they think torturing suspects in contradiction to our Bill of Rights and basic decency is a super important issue to rural voters, and putting up resistance to it would cost them a lot of votes.

Why was this not flaired as politics.

Go_Croconaw posted...

Why was this not flaired as politics.

Because I don't give a fuck about flairs?

Yeah, she's a torturer, but don't forget she's a kidnapper too. They use code words: enhanced interrogation means torture, and extraordinary rendition means kidnapping.

streamofthesky posted...

Gender identity politics won out over basic morality, huzzah!

Is that really what you think this is. You really think the Trump administration is doing gender identity politics. Is that really what you think?
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Nightengale posted...

streamofthesky posted...

Gender identity politics won out over basic morality, huzzah!

Is that really what you think this is. You really think the Trump administration is doing gender identity politics. Is that really what you think?

No, actually. Democrats. I know the Republicans don't give a shit about that stuff (though Sarah Huckabee Sanders mentioned it as a plus)
Saw left-leaning articles and opinion pieces mentioning excitedly that she'd be the first woman to lead the CIA, as if that fucking matters when she went against the request of her own presidential administration and destroyed the evidence of the torture she was a part of.

Nightengale posted...

streamofthesky posted...

Gender identity politics won out over basic morality, huzzah!

Is that really what you think this is. You really think the Trump administration is doing gender identity politics. Is that really what you think?

Do you think no one was mentioning her gender?

I don't think it's the reason democrats chose to appoint a torturer who belongs in prison however.

I wouldn't mind getting slapped around by her ...

Oh hey, she's actually qualified for the position, and not shoehorned in to meet a gender quota.
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WaffIeElite posted...

Oh hey, she's actually qualified for the position, and not shoehorned in to meet a gender quota.

Torturing people and then destroying the evidence is qualifications for a leadership position in the land of the free?

The torturing was clearly justified. All of these people are letting one small incident smear a rather legitimate career.
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Nomak-54 posted...

The torturing was clearly justified. All of these people are letting one small incident smear a rather legitimate career.

Are you insane?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4G8IlNYgws" data-time="
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Nomak-54 posted...

The torturing was clearly justified. All of these people are letting one small incident smear a rather legitimate career.

Torture is never justified because it never fucing works. Period.
But hey, it's 2018, and we're breaking barriers! Women can be just as fucking terrible as men in Trump's administration! #Feminism.