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On Wednesday, I was given nine minutes on radio to comment on the ICC's tentative move to seek accountability for American torture practices. But Pompeo's nomination on Friday is sure to dispel the brief moment of anxiety among the CIA's torturers.
Congressman Pompeo is living proof that you can get all A's at West Point, graduate first in your class, and still flunk the Constitution with its quaint Eighth Amendment prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment." Not knowing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights apparently makes you a good pick to head the CIA.
As member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Pompeo also was protective of the National Security Agency's systematic abuse of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against illegal searches and seizures.
The selection of Pompeo came a few days after Vice President-elect Mike Pence told ABC that he would model his handling of the job after former Vice President Dick Cheney under President George W. Bush.
Though Pence may have meant Cheney's assertive role and interaction with Congress, there was also Cheney's advocacy for "regime change" wars and what the Bush administration called "enhanced interrogation techniques," which earned Cheney the label from The Washington Post, "Vice President for Torture."
Cheney has never been repentant about his aggressiveness in the "war on terror." "I'd do it again in a minute," he has declared.
Real Expert on Torture
Yet, even as Bush-Cheney apologists found excuses and euphemisms for torture, Gen. John Kimmons, head of Army Intelligence, told a Pentagon press conference on Sept. 6, 2006 -- the same day he knew that President Bush planned to advertise the efficacy of his "alternate set of procedures" -- that torture did not result in sound information.
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney receive an Oval Office briefing from CIA Director George Tenet. Also present is Chief of Staff Andy Card (on right).
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Conceding past "transgressions and mistakes," Kimmons insisted: "No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that." (Emphasis added)
That's also what I learned as a young Army Intelligence officer 50 years ago. Cheney, Hoekstra, Graham, Trump, Pence and Pompeo can keep whistling on the dark side, but there is zero evidence to challenge what Gen. Kimmons had to guts to point out on that important day. The Senate Intelligence Committee report of December 2014 should have long since laid to rest the canard that torture "works."
On a moral level, I also cannot quite fathom the attitude of Pence -- who says, "I'm a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order" -- tolerating torture and torture advocates. If memory serves, Jesus Christ was tortured to death.
Lest I seem to be coming down too hard on how so many fundamentalist Christians wink at (or applaud) torture, I must concede that -- after 9/11 -- the growing acceptance of practices like torture, previously widely condemned as totally unacceptable behavior, gained willing acceptance among many non-fundamentalist Christians, as well.
Many years ago when I studied ethics at Fordham, New York City's Jesuit university, I was taught that there was one immutable category called "intrinsic evil," which included slavery, rape and torture.
Somehow, torture slid out of that category when Fordham's president, Rev. Joseph M. McShane, SJ, succumbed to the "celebrity virus," and decided to ask alumnus (then-White House aide on counter-terrorism and now CIA Director) John Brennan to give the Commencement address in 2012.
Brennan had publicly defended the practice of extraordinary rendition (aka kidnapping, most often for torture). Brennan was also on the routing for emails regarding CIA torture procedures. (It is important to note that, without a demonstrated "need to know," no one is included as an addressee on such delicate matters.)
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