That was sheer…well…torture, watching it on television, an afternoon spent interrogating President Trump’s nominee to head the CIA.
So if it was bad for me, imagine how awful it was for the nominee herself Gina Haspel who was held captive before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where the Democrats showed her and the rest of us how real torture gets done.
Lesson Number 1 – Ask the same question over and over again a hundred times…and, shades of the Russia probe and the entire Resist Trump movement, keep at it without letup.
That is sure to make anyone beg for mercy and start spilling the beans – anything, but please stop!
Hours away from celebrating the inauguration of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem; another sign that Trump delivers, but never without a fight from his resisters – and here we go again.
So now it’s Gina Haspel…
Is Haspel, a mid-level CIA pro for more than 30 years, fit for the job? Absolutely, according to most Republicans on the committee. (Full Senate to vote on her this week.)
Not so fast, according to the Democrats, who, to say it simply enough, were mad at her because she does not like Radical Islamic terrorists as much as they do. In fact, she does not like them at all and at some point she was there when “enhanced interrogation techniques” were (allegedly) being used against people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11.
So did she know that, at the height of our war on terror, waterboarding (instead of Disneyland) may have been used against the sheik, and if she didn’t know, would she have approved?
The Democrats were interested in that and only that and so they took turns grilling her with the exact same question in the hope that she would break and reveal herself to be a Republican, worse, an admirer of President Trump. That, to them, is much worse than being an Islamic terrorist responsible for the murder of 3,000 Americans.
Even if the sheik had more life-saving secrets to divulge, it still would have been wrong to keep him up past his bedtime.
For Liberals, Americans are dispensable. Islamic terrorists are precious. That was made abundantly clear from one Democrat to another.
For them it’s a rosy world where, using the “Jeopardy” method, Alex Trebek would be the perfect host to get the facts painlessly. There’s no need for “sleep deprivation,” a technique that was used successfully to get terrorists to squawk in real time and in films like Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” which took us back to a time when we meant business.
Repeatedly on the hot seat, Haspel kept saying that her loyalty is to the United States of America and to the safety of its people. Just what you’d expect from a patriot.
But these are Liberals. They brushed that aside to let it be known that national security is of scant importance to them; not nearly as important or as heartbreaking should excessive interrogation, or an impolite remark, or poor ventilation, cause Sheikh Mohammed and his kind to suffer any sort of unpleasantness or discomfort.
The first duty of the CIA, just ask the Dems, is to make our enemies comfortable and in time to know how much cream and sugar they take for their coffee. Or shall it be tea, Mohammed?
What would the world think of us if they found us being SO RUDE to al Qaeda, so tactless to Hezbollah, so indelicate to Hamas?
Does she know, the Democrats asked, if not in so many words – does she know that terrorists have feelings, too?
Wouldn’t a hug be more appropriate? (Check out the back-to-back newsroom thrillers “The Bathsheba Deadline” and “News Anchor Sweetheart” for much more on all this.)
Haspel’s finest moment came when she spoke of the dangers of the job. CIA operatives risk their lives and often die to keep us safe. She lost friends and colleagues that way.
That scored no points.
For Liberals, Americans are dispensable. Islamic terrorists are precious.
The grilling resumed through the cruelty of repetition, the same tactic Democrats have been using for more than a year to torture the rest of America.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.
He is the author of the international book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal” and most recently the two journalism thrillers “The Bathsheba Deadline” and “News Anchor Sweetheart, Hollywood Edition.” Engelhard is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com