War hero senator rejects CIA nominee
dent Barack Obama’s executive action banning torture.
Two days after taking office in 2009, Obama issued an executive order prohibiting all government employees from using any interrogation method that wasn’t spelled out in the Army Field Manual, a military guide that banned brutal interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning.
For McCain, getting the antitorture amendment passed in 2015 was personal. He was beaten and kept in solitary confinement as a prisoner of war in Vietnam in the 1960s.
Graham, who missed much of the Senate action this week to spend time with his friend at the McCain family home, said in an interview that it’s thanks to the Arizona senator’s work that Haspel will be required to follow the law, as she said she would do. ‘‘Senator McCain’s view of what the country’s doing won the day,’’ Graham told AP. ‘‘The reason we are where we are is from Senator McCain’s voice.’’
Haspel, the CIA’s acting director and a career intelligence officer, faced grilling at the Senate Intelligence Committee about her role overseeing some CIA operations in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Some senators asked about her morals.
Haspel told them she doesn’t believe torture works.
Haspel also said she believes the US should hold itself to the moral standards outlined in the manual.
The panel is expected to send the nomination on to the full Senate in coming weeks where confirmation will be tight.
The GOP’s narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate has been further slimmed with McCain’s absence. The 81-year-old senator was diagnosed in July with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. McCain left Washington in December and hasn’t yet been able to return.
But at least one Democrat, Sen Joe Manchin of West Virginia, announced he would vote in her favour. Vice President Mike Pence can be relied on to break a tie.
Feinstein said yesterday that she will oppose the nominee, calling the interrogation program part of ‘‘one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history and it must not be repeated.’’ – AP Villagers said it started with a loud rumble, then houses collapsed one by one under an approaching wall of water.
‘‘We took our children and rushed to higher ground,’’ farmer Joseph Maina told The Associated Press. Their home was submerged and their crops were washed away but, unlike dozens of others, they survived.
At least 44 were dead and another 40 were missing yesterday after a dam swollen by weeks of seasonal rains burst in Kenya’s Rift Valley, sweeping away hundreds of homes and sending people fleeing, officials said.
At least 20 of the dead were children. The estranged wife of Harvey Weinstein has said she was ‘‘terribly naive’’ not to suspect his behaviour and fears their children’s lives will be blighted forever by the scandal.
Georgina Chapman, pictured, a fashion designer, said she had been happily married and considered Weinstein to be a ‘‘wonderful partner’’ until accusations of sexual assault and harassment against him began mounting up.
Breaking her silence for the first time since the allegations began surfacing in October, Chapman wept as she discussed the couple’s children, India, seven, and Dashiell, five.
‘‘There was a part of me that was terribly naive – clearly, so naive. I have moments of rage, I have moments of confusion, I have