Posted on 01/05/2009 7:44:28 PM PST by Michael Eden
A month ago I wrote an article titled, "Obama Searches In Vain For CIA Director Who Won't Offend Left." Well, Obama has at last found a CIA Director, but only at the expense of abandoning any intelligence experience whatsoever as a prerequisite for the job.
I return to the same Star Tribune article I cited on December 4:
Finding a candidate for CIA chief who has the operational experience and is politically “clean” will be difficult, agreed a current senior intelligence official.Apparently, after a month of searching in vain for an experienced CIA professional who was a committed far-left loonie, Obama just decided to pitch out the whole cumbersome "operational experience" thing. Being political "clean" (defined as "being pleasing to the far-left) was the much more pressing issue.John Radsan, a former assistant general counsel at the CIA, said Obama has to strike a difficult balance.
“They need somebody who rose to the level of a division chief in the clandestine service but didn’t spend too much time” with former CIA directors George Tenet and Porter Goss and current director Michael Hayden.
“But in the senior ranks you can’t escape the reality that the CIA is associated with controversial practices since 9/11,” Radsan said.
It's that whole "Jack Bauer" drama played out in real life; the people who protect us from the ugliest and most vicious monsters often have to cross lines that liberals cannot bear to contemplate.
Or another protagonist, the Dark Knight himself. Spectrum Magazine describes the dilemma of heroes who would fight against the most unrelentingly savage evil:
There is no doubt that The Dark Knight can be evaluated purely on a entertainment level. It has all the trappings of the modern Hollywood film -- special effects, amazing stunts, romantic interests. But the narrative asks us to journey into deep ethical and moral territory as it confronts the problem of evil which seems so intractable against good action. For Batman to overcome The Joker, it seems he must descend into moral darkness himself. But the question is, can he remain pure, while using evil methods to overcome the evil.Barack Obama's first choice for the job, career intelligence professional John Brennan, had fought that battle with evil and had been forced to make certain choices that rendered him "ceremonially unclean" with the far left. One might argue that actually fighting evil, or even acknowledging that such an archaic concept as "evil" even exists in the first place, might well be the kiss of death for any would be CIA Director as far as the left is concerned.
It's so much easier to stand on the sidelines and vindictively condemn anyone who gets in the ring to fight evil with bare knuckles (let alone brass ones). That's why liberals have historically demonized soldiers as "baby killers" and still continue to protest military recruiting centers, numerous ROTC programs across the country, and even a battleship that helped win World War II from becoming a floating museum.
Who could Barack Obama appoint to the critical position of Director of Central Intellignce without offending these people, who rise up against the very notion of preserving American security?
Enter Leon Panetta, career partisan political hack and Clinton lackey. Operational intelligence experience: zero, point-zero zero.
We've learned since 9/11 that intelligence requires two things: understanding and communication. The Obama administration is already showing that it values neither in its action to appoint Panetta. Both gigantic flaws are evident in the outrage of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, incoming Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to a Newsmax article.
Sen. Diane Feinstein is reportedly fuming that Barack Obama picked Leon Panetta as his new CIA Director and neverconsulted with her.The article concludes with this:Feinstein, the incoming chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, issued a sharp statement Monday that was a thinly veiled criticism of the pick. It made it clear that she head expected a career intelligence professional – unlike Panetta, who has no intelligence expertise whatsoever – to be leading the CIA.
"I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director,’’ Feinstein said. “I know nothing about this, other than what I've read,' said Senator Feinstein, who will chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the 111th Congress.
"My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.'"
Veterans of the CIA were caught off guard by the selection.But Kit Bond is wrong: "job number one at the CIA" is now to appease the perennially outraged left."I'm at a loss," said Robert Grenier, a former director of the CIA's counterterrorism center and 27-year veteran of the agency who now is managing director of Kroll, a security consulting company.
The lack of intelligence experience puts Panetta at "a tremendous disadvantage," Grenier told The Associated Press in an interview.
"Intelligence by its very nature is an esoteric world. And right now the agency is confronted with numerous pressing challenges overseas, and to have no background is a serious deficit. I don't say that he can't succeed. It may that he can compensate for the obvious deficit."
Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., ranking member of the committee, raised the specter of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 in questioning Panetta's experience after reports surfaced that Obama had tapped the former congressman and White House chief of staff to head the CIA.
“Job number one at the CIA is to track down and stop terrorists," Bond said in a statement reported by The Hill Web site. "In a post-9-11 world, intelligence experience would seem to be a prerequisite for the job of CIA Director."
Obviously, we can't have epic fantasy heroes like Jack Bauer or Batman fighting for us, but now we can't have a real world intelligece expert such as John Brennan fight on our behalf either. All that's left (and I do mean 'left') are political hacks such as Hillary Clinton and now Leon Panetta.
Barack Obama has the political instincts of a weasel. And now he is putting weasels over our national security apparatus at a time when we face more threats than possibly any time in history.
or Junior Senator for New York.
This guy is amazingly incompetent. You'd think he'd never held an executive position before. Oh, yeah: he hasn't.
What?? I should be to produce accurate and timely information about all of America's opponents in the world. Give the information about terrorists' locations to somebody competent, the military for example.
I want to know about Russian and Chines weapon systems, their location and capabilities, and who is buying them. CIA efforts at regime change have been notoriously inept. They need to stick to spying until they get that right.
I’d love to see his resume to see if he spelled “Former Clinton Hack” correctly.
Going back to the Clinton thinking — Police actions.
Appointing a former political hack operative and Clinton loyalist to run the CIA just shows that Obama means to use the CIA to watch US, not THEM.
apparently their new director, based on his resume, will be able to direct their spying to important issues like global warming and civil rights violations
This seems another example of the bizarre management notion that’s been around for a number of years which holds that once you’ve run one big organization, you can run any big organization - used to argue about it with a guy, a former Navy man, at the hospital where we worked - he insisted that someone who had commanded a naval vessel could easily walk in and lead a hospital, but for some reason bristled when I suggested that that meant someone who had once led a hospital should be able to take over command of any naval vessel......
“This guy is amazingly incompetent. You’d think he’d never held an executive position before. Oh, yeah: he hasn’t. “
His whole cabinet seems like in great part a payoff to who’s who (or who has been who) of democrats. To see names like Daschle and Shalala tossed around seriously in this context is just crazy. Letting your SOS be someone whose husband has made hundreds of millions from foreign governments since leaving office is just loopy.
I wonder how much power he has in who he is picking. He cannot possibly want people with long-term ties to the clintons surrounding him.
Yeah, you’ve got a good point.
Obama has been depicted as the paradigm of great transition team. Bush, who actually CREATED the transition system that is getting so much praise, gets no credit at all.
Obama couldn’t pass his own vetting test, due to his numerous radical associations (not to mention hard drug use). But that’s just one of those hypocritical things we are supposed to chuckle over and forget. Still, rather than lower the bar for vetting, Obama raised it - with the measurement being, “Will something in an applicant’s past cause “the one” political embarrassment?”
The Bill Richardson departure is a major embarrassment for Obama’s vetting apparatus. How the hell could they not have known about this? It was all over the place for months!
One of the problems a man of such incredibly limited experience such as Obama creates is an absolute loss as to how to pick the best leaders. He doesn’t know anybody (outside of corrupt Chicago types); he doesn’t have the relationships to connect the best people to the best positions. So he has no choice but to go back to the last Democratic administration and hire all the same people. What other choice does he have?
Good point (why we don’t have hospital administrators assuming command of aircraft carrier wings).
One can often go from one large organization in one industry to another in a similar industry. But you don’t see CEO’s in the food industry suddenly going into the electronics industry and being successful.
Panetta is a politician. Politics and spin is his “product.” It’s all he’s done, and it’s all he understands. Intelligence is an entirely different kind of thing. And Panetta will be making decisions based on the wrong parameters.
Someone said, going back to the war on terror as a law enforcement matter. I don’t doubt that a bit.
I always thought Panetta looked like a used car salesman.
bookmark
Feinstein is not the only one. Joe Biden came out against it also. Yeh Joe supports Panetta at the same time he is complaining that more educated and experienced people (my interpretation) should help Obama make that choice.
Looks like Biden was just a show appointment, and Obama is going to treat him like a redheaded stepchild.
From DelawareOnline.
WASHINGTON — Vice President-elect Joe Biden said today that it was a “just a mistake” for President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team not to consult a top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee before selecting Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who will lead the committee, reportedly said she knew nothing of the selection, other than what she read in media reports.
“I’m still a Senate man,” Biden told a gaggle of reporters following his seventh swearing-in ceremony to the Senate. “I think it’s always good to talk to the requisite members of Congress. I think it was just a mistake.”
Biden defended the selection of Panetta, President Clinton’s former chief of staff, saying he is “totally qualified” as a longtime “consumer of intelligence.”
I’ve read every Grisham book, should I now ask him to step aside?
And to continue, Feinstein AND Biden are not the only ones. Feinstein opposes the Panetta selection as the incoming Intelligence Chairman; Nelson Rockefeller opposes it as the outgoing chairman. And both are liberal Democrats.
Feinstein is indicating she will play ball (which means that Obama got to her). There was never any real chance that Democrats would actually vote against Panetta. The only chance is if Republicans throw holy hell at it and people start calling their Senators worrying over our security. And I doubt if Republicans have the courage to do that now.
Panetta is a liberal Democrat and a politician. Bush took a lot of fire for “politicizing intelligence”; how does sticking a lifelong partisan liberal Democrat into the job do anything but GUARANTEE “politicized intelligence”?
Further, Panetta is not being installed to “lead” the CIA; rather, he’s there to decapitate it. Liberals have always despised the intelligence system; now is there chance to gut it once and for all.
Just remember to hold Barack Obama and his tool Panetta personally responsible for the next terrorist attack.
I think I actually bought a used car from Panetta (or maybe his twin?). And it was a lemon complete with sawdust in the oil so it wouldn’t leak until I got it off the lot.
“Used car salesman” is an apt metaphor for what’s going on here.
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