As if Gina Haspel didn’t get tortured enough yesterday, during her Senate Confirmation Hearing, “Rolling Stone Magazine” (which actually used to do real type journalism), has published an article titled “An Open Letter to Gina Haspel From Someone Who Was Physically Tortured”. Don’t misunderstand me. The author of the article Theo Padnos was really truly tortured. He was tortured by the Al Qaeda “system”. Real true torture.

From the “Rolling Stone” article:

I knew, from general reading I had done at home, that in almost all such situations, there are blindfolds. There are humiliations. So it was in Aleppo in the weeks before I was tortured the first time.

Then it began. I learned right away about the electrical wires. Some of these, it turns out, are just for show. But some are real. That winter, I learned that they almost always want you to feel you are close to death when they are doing their thing to you. But just because they want you to feel this way does not mean that people around you are not dying. If you’ve ever heard torture happening (as perhaps you have, Ms. Haspel?) you will know that there is no science to this art. If the torturers are annoyed, and even if they’re not, they might kill their prisoner by accident.

I am sorry that Theo was tortured, but, dude, “general reading”. Can you say “naive”, sure you can? Mayhap, if instead of “general reading” you had watched the video of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed murdering journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002, you might have been a little better prepared for 2013.

More from the article:

I did know what they wanted to hear. I knew this because they told me: “You are CIA.” They screamed: “You know Guantanamo? Abu Ghraib?”

Murder, torture and sick sexual perversions have been part of the terrorist bag of nasty tricks for a blue million years. If you knew history, you would know that Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, our involvement in the Middle East, and our alliance with Israel are just excuses for them to do the sick stuff they were going to do any way.

Again, from the article:

For what it’s worth, at the time, as I tried to trace the violence that was being done to me through a chain of causes, my thoughts alighted on the psychologists, subcontractors, CIA agents and legal experts who had found it within themselves to aid in the torture of prisoners at your famous “black sites.” Those Americans, it seemed to me, had not cared enough to reflect on who might pay for their crimes when, in the fullness of time, the torture seeped into the Islamic world’s collective unconscious, fructified, embodied itself in younger people, then crept again into the streets.

and more:

While I was waiting in a heap of bloody clothing for my torturers to return, those career success stories, I was certain of it, were waiting in drawing rooms in Washington and Berkeley. Tea was in the offing there, perhaps a lecture. Those tea drinkers at home I did not want to forgive.

Wow, talk about projection. Mr. Padnos swirled what those dirty savages were doing to him around in his head and came up with the CIA. Mr. Padnos, were you predisposed to dislike the CIA and “military industrial complex” already? That’s called “Bias Confirmation”. I am sure you were already aware of that term.

In addition to watching Khalid Sheikh Mohammed butcher Daniel Pearl, you should read “Enhanced Interrogation” by Dr. James Mitchell. The book wasn’t published until 2016, too late to help you in 2013. It would help you understand the difference between “Enhanced Interrogation” and torture.

Gina Haspel and our brave operators in the CIA did not torture any one. Reading the book “Enhanced Interrogation” helped me understand that when someone did cross the line, they were quickly reassigned to non-interrogation units. It also helped me understand the sick, twisted animals that smeared their own feces all over their cells and subjected our personnel to other indignities at “black sites” cannot be reasoned with or treated as human beings. Even through this, we continued to treat them with respect.

We cannot define torture down. Mr. Padnos, you were tortured by sick animals. Gina Haspel was tortured for the joy of the masses yesterday in her Senate Confirmation Hearing. Mental torture by twisted, sick Senators who are not worthy to stand in the shadow of Ginal Haspel. I picked Senator Kamala Harris (Disdainful-CA) but almost every Senator of either party would show you the mental torture inflicted on an American hero.

The Senator should know that the declassification of Miss Haspel’s record would jeopardize lives and National Security. Instead, she and the other filthy amoebas who call themselves Senators tortured Miss Haspel mentally. The cretins at the black sites would probably prefer to be waterboarded than listen to pathetic shitbrains from yesterday.

What happened at the black sites was not torture. It was not immoral. Please don’t define torture down. Wrong again, “Rolling Stone”.