[QUOTE=ewmayer;482347]
I expect the Team D reactions to Haspel's elevation will fall broadly into 3 categories:

1. Hypocritical she's a torturer" objectors: hypocritical, because where were the objections to Haspel et al's war crimes when they committining them "to keep America safe" under Obama?[/QUOTE]
Er, ah, she ran the "Cat's Eye" prison in Thailand starting in 2002. She was, apparently, directly involved in the destruction of the videos of the waterboarding, "walling," etc done there. The videos were destroyed in 2005. Obama was not President then.

Another brain fart?

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;482396]Er, ah, she ran the "Cat's Eye" prison in Thailand starting in 2002. She was, apparently, directly involved in the destruction of the videos of the waterboarding, "walling," etc done there. The videos were destroyed in 2005. Obama was not President then.

Another brain fart?[/QUOTE]

Possibly, but you can just as easily substitute torture advocate John Brennan or any number of Intel officials who moved seamlessly from the Bush to the Obama administration, and now the Trump one. Haspel certainly didn't suffer career-wise under Obama. Of course it's difficult to say precisely to what extent the black-site program was ratcheted back post-Bush, because under Obama the whole shebang was cleverly [url=https://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/10/08/under-obama-black-sites-swapped-for-ships.html]moved from land to sea[/url] and [url=https://theintercept.com/2015/03/13/cia-director-explains-u-s-outsources-terror-interrogations/]outsourced to a new set of "strategic partner nations"[/url], at the same time he drone-killing program was vastly expanded. Pick your poison, but the criticism of all this horrorshow stuff was extremely muted when it was the well-spoken 'liberal' guy overseeing it. And no one of the real high-ups in officialdom is ever legally held to account. As [url=https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-new-c-i-a-deputy-chiefs-black-site-past]the New Yorker notes[/url], "When Obama took office, in 2009, he declared that he would not prosecute anyone involved in the C.I.A.’s interrogation programs, not even senior officers, among whom Haspel was one. At the time, Obama said he wanted to look forward and not back. But the past, as Obama well knows, never goes away. With the prospect of American torture looming again, I wonder if Obama regrets his decision. After all, people like Haspel, quite plausibly, could have gone to prison."

It's almost a tag-team match: thuggish right-wing pres does it, lots of fiery criticism in the media and from the supposed opposition party, which oddly never seems to actually muster a vote against such stuff. Well-spoken 'progressive' takes office, says nice words, muted criticism allows him to normalize and institutionalize the horror, at the same time the MSM and Hollywood pump out the appropriate propaganda and entertainment vehicles which portray the horror as both necessary and heroic. A kind of ratchet effect, where the public is deliberately and progressively desensitized to ever-increasing surveillance and keepng-America-safe violence. We're now back to another thuggish cycle, lots of fire and fury in the MSM, but congress has given Trump pretty much everything he wants in the areas of surveillance and warmaking.

And I see today that the usual Intel creeps, Brennan, Panetta, Clapper, etc, are gushing in their praise for Haspel. Bipartisanship at its finest!

[Addendum] [url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/us/politics/cia-deputy-director-gina-haspel-torture-thailand.html]This NYT piece[/url] contains a rare example of DiFi doing the right thing:
[quote]The [Thailand black site] sessions were videotaped and the recordings stored in a safe at the C.I.A. station in Thailand until 2005, when they were ordered destroyed. By then, Ms. Haspel was serving at C.I.A. headquarters, and it was her name that was on the cable carrying the destruction orders.

The agency maintains that the decision to destroy the recordings was made by Ms. Haspel’s boss at the time, Jose Rodriguez, who was the head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service.

But years later, when the C.I.A. wanted to name Ms. Haspel to run clandestine operations, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, then the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, blocked the promotion over Ms. Haspel’s role in the interrogation program and the destruction of the tapes.[/quote]

And a question: which oversight entity, if any, is in play w.r.to Haspel's nomination? According to the above New Yorker piece, "Because Haspel’s new job is exempt from congressional confirmation, it’s doubtful she will ever have to publicly answer questions about her role in what amounts to America’s dirty war." But if such an appointment is not subject to congressional confirmation, why is being referred to in many places as a "nomination"?

:goodposting: I say this with depression, sadness, and rage. You nailed it, Ernst.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;482440]Possibly, but you can just as easily substitute torture advocate John Brennan or any number of Intel officials who moved seamlessly from the Bush to the Obama administration, and now the Trump one. Haspel certainly didn't suffer career-wise under Obama. Of course it's difficult to say precisely to what extent the black-site program was ratcheted back post-Bush, because under Obama the whole shebang was cleverly [url=https://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/10/08/under-obama-black-sites-swapped-for-ships.html]moved from land to sea[/url] and [url=https://theintercept.com/2015/03/13/cia-director-explains-u-s-outsources-terror-interrogations/]outsourced to a new set of "strategic partner nations"[/url], at the same time he drone-killing program was vastly expanded. Pick your poison, but the criticism of all this horrorshow stuff was extremely muted when it was the well-spoken 'liberal' guy overseeing it.[/QUOTE]
Fair enough. Bullies and sadists are not generally known for changing their stripes ([i]Il Duce[/i] being, IMHO, a case in point). I was just going by what was in the "Democracy Now!" piece you'd linked to, which only referenced the Thai prison stuff.

In my attempts to look up her career after that, though, I did notice that Haspel had been made acting head of Clandestine Operations in 2013, and posted to London as the top CIA representative there. As you say, her career didn't suffer under Obama. And, of course, it did not escape my notice that, having a sadist running the show at Clandestine Operations has sinister implications for how those ops are conducted.

I suppose the same could be said, [i]a fortiori[/i], for said sadist being made permanent head of the whole Agency.

What Happens When A Russiagate Skeptic Debates A Professional Russiagater
 

-by Caitlin Johnstone
[URL]https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/what-happens-when-a-russiagate-skeptic-debates-a-professional-russiagater-1e796f620a4a[/URL]

I am glad that there are still some dissenting voices in the charade.

[QUOTE]Have you ever wondered why mainstream media outlets, despite being so fond of dramatic panel debates on other hot-button issues, never have critics of the Russiagate narrative on to debate those who advance it? Well, in a recent [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ikf1uZli4g"][I]Real News[/I] interview[/URL] we received an extremely clear answer to that question, and it was so epic it deserves its own article.
[I]
Real News[/I] host and producer Aaron Maté has recently emerged as one of the most articulate critics of the establishment Russia narrative and the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, and has [URL="https://www.thenation.com/authors/aaron-mate/"]published in [I]The Nation[/I][/URL] some of the [URL="https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-is-more-fiction-than-fact/"]clearest arguments[/URL] against both that I’ve yet seen. Luke Harding is a journalist for [I]The Guardian[/I] where he has [URL="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/lukeharding"]been writing prolifically[/URL] in promotion of the Russiagate narrative, and is the author of [URL="https://twitter.com/lukeharding1968/status/936577757676494854"][I]New York Times[/I] bestseller[/URL] [I]Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.[/I]

In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that [I]The Intercept[/I]’s Jeremy Scahill accurately described as “brutal”.
[/QUOTE]The article above is linked in the following piece from Consortium News.
Acceptable Bigotry and Scapegoating of Russia -By Natylie Baldwin
[URL]https://consortiumnews.com/2018/03/15/acceptable-bigotry-and-scapegoating-of-russia/[/URL]
[QUOTE]Over the last year and a half, Americans have been bombarded with the Gish Gallop claims of Russiagate. In that time, the most reckless comments have been made against the Russians in service of using that country as a scapegoat for problems in the United States that were coming to a head, which were the real reasons for Donald Trump’s upset victory in 2016. It has even gotten to the point where irrational hatred against Russia is becoming normalized, with the usual organizations that like to warn of the pernicious consequences of bigotry silent.

The first time I realized how low things would likely get was when Ruth Marcus, deputy editor of the Washington Post, sent out the following tweet in March of 2017, squealing with delight at the thought of a new Cold War with the world’s other nuclear superpower: “So excited to be watching The Americans, throwback to a simpler time when everyone considered Russia the enemy. Even the president.”

Not only did Marcus’s comment imply that it was great for the U.S. to have an enemy, but it specifically implied that there was something particularly great about that enemy being Russia.[/QUOTE]

I guess DHS is in on the "Russia hysteria," too...

[url=https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A]Alert (TA18-074A) Russian Government Cyber Activity Targeting Energy and Other Critical Infrastructure Sectors[/url]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;482614]I guess DHS is in on the "Russia hysteria," too...

[URL="https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A"]Alert (TA18-074A) Russian Government Cyber Activity Targeting Energy and Other Critical Infrastructure Sectors[/URL][/QUOTE]
Well, first, remember the origins of DHS. It was highly politicized from the beginning.
[URL]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chertoff+body+scanners&t=ffsb&ia=web[/URL]
Also, remember the manipulated "color code of the week" threat announcements.
[URL]http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/01/26/threat.level.system.change/index.html[/URL]

My concern is that I have watched, through many sources, the progress of,[INDENT]"Could it be that.....?" morphing into
"Of course it is!" with regard to all things alleged about Russia.
[/INDENT]Certain pieces of evidence were never produced, even though they were critical to the assertions. Case in point is the DNC servers. It has been said that the DNC "never allowed" the FBI access to the servers, relying instead on CrowdStrike to provide evidence.
[URL]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dnc+servers+fbi&t=ffsb&ia=web[/URL]
This has always seemed bogus to me. Since when do enterprises involved in investigations get to be gate keepers for key evidence? Further, as I understand the legal system, if the FBI had wanted access they would have gotten it. This leaves serious questions, such as "leak versus hack" unanswered.

Then there is the immediate rise of smear campaigns against those who question the rush to judgement. Questioning quickly got the inquirers labeled as "useful idiots for Putin," if the accusers were being kind; or "paid stooges for Putin," if they were letting it all hang out. Ad hominem attacks are well-known diversionary tactics, and we are still awash in them.

Now, we witness the stampede regarding the UK nerve agent attack. Once again, key evidence is being withheld by the government. Instead, we have, "This agent was developed by the Soviets, so its use [U]must be[/U] by the Russians." Never mind the UK chemical weapons site just up the road. Never mind that the formula is widely known.

Just as with the allegations of Syrian government use of sarin, one [U]should ask[/U] "[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono"]cui bono[/URL]?" In both cases, those assumed to be the perpetrators had the most to lose, while the primary accusers have the most to gain. See [URL="https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/23/the-white-helmets-controversy/"]White Helmets[/URL].

Once again, I have no automatic trust for the motives or actions of any Great Power, be it Russia, the US, or the UK. My alarms go off when there is a concerted effort to lock in one narrative without direct evidence. These alarms get louder when [U]professional liars[/U] like [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clapper"]James Clapper[/URL] set the tone with pontification on [URL="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/mar/11/james-clappers-testimony-one-year-later/"]Russian "genetic" compulsions.[/URL] Those descriptions could apply to the spook wing of any major country, including this one.

This whole topical area is the cause of much personal domestic discord for me. My partner got very upset with me last night, partly over the concept that nothing, and no players, in such messy situations should be taken at face value. "Can't believe anyone" was unacceptable.

"Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world,
but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set,
uprooting the evil in the fields that we know,
so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.
What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

(Gandalf, of course)

Well put.

[QUOTE=kladner;482620]"Can't believe anyone" was unacceptable.[/QUOTE]

Trust, but verify.

[QUOTE=kladner;482620]Well, first, remember the origins of DHS. It was highly politicized from the beginning.[/QUOTE]
Gee, it's great to know one can simply dismiss the alert out of hand!

I like to be able to consider things on their merits, but in this case, I don't know enough about operating systems or writing code to assess whether the stuff in the alert even made sense, or that, assuming the things claimed to have been done were in fact done, they would have the effects described -- let alone whether the activities described had in fact taken place. It just seemed to me that, if they had, then that would be bad.

What a relief to know that one can simply ignore the whole thing!