Panetta to Head CIA!?!?

Weird, but….


  If torture can stop the next terrorist attack, the next suicide bomber, then what’s wrong with a little waterboarding or electric shock?

   The simple answer is the rule of law.

That quote, provided by Phil S 33 from this article by Panetta is encouraging!

He ends the article thusly…


We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.

w00t!

We’ll see what the blog vetting process comes up with, but with that stated position, and a knowledge of the intelligence community from his time as Chief of Staff….well we SURE could have done worse!

What do y’all know of him?

18 comments

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  1. Photobucket

    If they hate on him, then we know (at least a bit) that it is a good choice, lol.

    • Robyn on January 5, 2009 at 21:39

    But one wonders what qualifications he has to be head spook.

  2. Personally, I was hoping she’d get the job.

  3. Whew! The CIA finally will have a Director who is smart, tough, and principled. It has been a long time a comin’.

    Most CIA employees, whatever their political persuasions, are reality-based. The analysts tend to lean politically more to the left, and the operations personnel tend to lean a little more to the right. But the job of both is to extract reality from facts, and they are almost invariably extremely bright and able–every bit as bright and able as the Foreign Service Officers in the State Department, for example. Only some of the paramilitary types (and, of course, some of the detritus dumped at the Agency by the Bush Administration) tend to inhabit neocon cuckoo land.

    My guess is that the professionals at CIA will not undercut Panetta, but rather will welcome him as a leader who will draw on their expertise and who will ask hard questions–rather than impose upon them a delusional, ideological, political agenda.

    Intelligence serves best when it called upon to inform policy rather than when it is instructed to support policy. Panetta seems likely to correct the course at CIA and head firmly in that direction.

    • RUKind on January 6, 2009 at 00:19

    She read the news, she says. Wasn’t consulted! We need an intel pro in times like these!! Harrumph!!!

    Umm, Diane. You wouldn’t by any chance be one of those legislative leaders from both houses and both parties who signed off on torture, rendition, secret prisons, Gitmo and such, would you? You know, like, maybe a war criminal?

    Wouldn’t want to have some civvie type running the show. He might not understand the whole Jack Bauer-ness of of the real world. I wonder what your sister Nancy in the other chamber is thinking about Leon’s appointment?

    This could get interesting. 😉

    • Edger on January 6, 2009 at 01:58

    The Leon E. Panetta Central Intelligence Agency. . .?

    leon_panetta.jpgI have always liked Leon Panetta.  He’s human, smart, generally straightforward.  I dealt with him a number of times when I was working in the Senate for Senator Jeff Bingaman — and Leon never steered me wrong.

    But I’ve always found it a bit amusing that Leon Panetta serves as “Institute Director” of the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy at Cal State Monterey Bay.  Leon Panetta also serves on the Board of Directors of the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute which hosts each year the Leon Panetta Lecture Series and which also is home to the Leon E. Panetta Archive.

    Maybe — but innocent til proven guilty — Charlie Rangel was trying to get a gig like this going.  Only problem is that Rangel is still in office — and at least Leon and his wife Sylvia have built this public policy center on their own time — and it’s nowhere near as self-branding as the “Clinton Global Inititiave“.

    Well, Barack Obama has had to jump through quite a few names — one of them a good friend of mine who no doubt will be DCI in a few more rounds — to settle on Leon Panetta as his new Director of Central Intelligence.

    My only question is will we be naming the CIA the Leon E. Panetta Central Intelligence Agency?

    Offered in humor. . .

    — Steve Clemons

    Panetta seems like a take charge kind of guy…  ðŸ˜‰

    • robodd on January 6, 2009 at 05:13

    Therefore, I am for him.

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