It remains to seen if Gina Haspel will be confirmed as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but she has one more voice in her corner today: Darth Lord of Torture Dick Cheney
Cheney left the confines of his dark citadel this morning and appeared on Fox News where he endorsed Gina Haspel and went ten steps further by saying we should bring back torture.
“If it were my call, I would not discontinue those programs,” he said in an interview that aired Thursday morning on Fox Business. “I’d have them active and ready to go, and I’d go back and study them and learn.” [...]
“I think the techniques we used were not torture. A lot of people try to call it that, but it wasn’t deemed torture at the time,” he told Maria Bartiromo. “People want to go back and try to rewrite history, but if it were my call, I’d do it again.”
If Haspel's nomination wasn't already a referendum on torture, it may be now.
Cheney and Trump himself have both endorsed torture in the process of promoting Haspel's nomination while Cheney has been more blunt.
I don't know if Haspel will be confirmed, but if she is I suspect it will be by a slim margin.