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CIA chief nominee ran controversial 'black site' prison
- HeyWolfey 9y agoI mean.... technically... now she runs all CIA black sites.
- gscott 9y agoYou are given a task. "Torture terrorists for intelligence" you are not given high quality terrorists and you get pretty much nothing. It gets shut down, shred the evidence. As an employee is this your problem or the problem of the person who gave you this task?
- cwkoss 9y agoBoth. Torture is criminal.
- yusee 9y agoTorturing people deemed to be terrorists is not intelligent, it's a war crime, and it's everybody's problem.
- matt4077 9y agoThis question was probably answered most eloquently in Hannah Arendt’s report on the Eichmann trial, The Banality of Evil. But to summarize: > is this your problem or the problem of the person who gave you this task? Yes
- gumby 9y agoIt's a crime under Geneva Convention to obey an illegal order (unless, I believe, you think you will killed if you don't obey). It's also a crime under the same conventions to give an illegal order. This was the basis of the Nuremberg and Tokyo war trials.
- qsymmachus 9y agoGlad this is back on the front page, because an earlier post with the story was flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16576569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16576569 Someone care to explain why this was flagged?
- macawfish 9y agoIt's very offensive to me that this post was flagged. Like red flag, quit reading hackernews level offensive. Edit: I'm seeing that the comments got way outta hand. People are clearly very upset and feel helpless about this.
- DoreenMichele 9y agoFlags are from users, not moderators.
- spoonier 9y agoSo? Once a mod is informed, and the story is proven legit, the flag needs to be removed. In fact, a user made a post - news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18577485 - calling for discussion on the removal of this thread, and the implications of such. 'dang', the moderator, accused him of "breaking site guidelines", "creating drama" and said the story needed to remain flagged to prevent "outrage". So yeah, we need to talk about the mods now.
- CompanionCuuube 9y ago"Outrage" is from users, not moderators.
- DoreenMichele 9y agoIt does break the guidelines and it does create drama. Dang is Dan Gackle. His handle is his first name and last initial, a fairly common format of member name used by such prominent members as Sam Altman (sama) and Jacques Mattheij (jacquesm). He does have a sense of humor about how his user name also works as a mild faux swear word or exclamation, but it isn't the primary reason he chose that handle. I'm sorry you aren't happy about stuff being flagged or whatever, but this is not a good way to try to accomplish anything on this site. The mods do a good job and are generally pretty respected and the rules exist for a reason.
- mc32 9y agoThis could be unpopular to say: There is no qualified indiv in the CIA who will not have her background characteristics. Go outside the org and you get a Tillerson, a well meaning person, but someone out of their element. If we believe Russia is about to enter our walls, as the MSM broadcast, we certainly need someone who knows the reins who will capably deal with our adversaries.
- cwkoss 9y agoWhat if the CIA is intentionally propagandizing our nation into thinking Russia is about to enter our walls because it increases their funding - both directly from congress and through increased value of their investments in the MIC?
- shaki-dora 9y agoThat’s simply wrong. The CIA has 20000 employees. The vast majority of them never participated in torture. That’s because they are not in roles that do such things, because torture was just not used extensively enough to involve many people, or because there has been a lot of turnover in the roughly 12 years since the practice was stopped.
- mc32 9y agoLet's just say rank and files will never get congressional approval. So they are out. You're left with career operatives who've proven themselves in multiple facets including bureaucratic organizational, etc.
- justinpombrio 9y agoMods, could you consider unflagging this story?
- johnny313 9y agoJust curious, but why is this flagged? It seems like it is an article of interest to the community - just trying to understand what happened. Thanks for any feedback!
- DanBC 9y ago> but why is this flagged? It's not on topic for HN. HN users flagged it. There are countless other places you can discuss this.