On the strange appointment of the perpetually sad-faced Leon Panetta as CIA chief
An L-dotter comments:
This is soooooo wrong. You might as well put Jamie Gorelick back at DOJ. Time to start the pool predicting the date of the next 9/11.
Hey, I think Obama ought to keep Bush’s FBI director Robert Mueller in office as well. That way we would have in our two top intelligence positions two men of depressed, depressing, defeated, guilty mien. It’ll great for national morale.
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Here are some more L-dotters:
Reply 5—Posted by: ocjim, 1/5/2009 11:18:31 PM
“Mr. Panetta regularly attended daily intelligence briefings in the Oval Office…’
Oh…, OK then.
And ya know, I’ve been regularly attending Dodger games for years and still the bastads won’t let me manage the ball club…
Reply 13—Posted by: ladychatalie, 1/6/2009 5:58:42 AM
After 8 years of hauling water for democrats, all the CIA gets is a hollow Panette figurehead. Why is the CIA advertising for new spooks like crazy? Who are they actually hiring? ACORN staff?
Reply 18—Posted by: justjoe, 1/6/2009 7:17:08 AM
Terrorists will *fear* this man because his name, in Italian, means “Lion of Cured Pork!” That’s why he was chosen!—Oh, wait: “Lion of Cured Pork” would be “Leon Pancetta.” “Pancetta” not “Panetta.” Sorry about that.
I have no idea why he was chosen.
Reply 41—Posted by: redterp, 1/6/2009 9:56:50 AM
Hey, I thought he’d nominate Valery Plame. Was I wrong.
Reply 60—Posted by: 49 Ford, 1/6/2009 2:59:43 PM
I don’t think it makes a tinker’s damn worth of difference whom Obie picks to nominally head up this agency. The CIA has been lethargic, obsessed with CYA and suffused with politics since forever. Does it really matter who heads up an agency infested with Valerie Plame types and maybe a few old-timers who vaguely remember the Grand Plan to make Casto’s beard fall out?
The incoming administration will be what it is going to be, and whoever warms the chair the CIA—experienced or not—will prove to be irrelevant.
Paul of Powerline has a different
take on the Panetta appointment:
My first reaction to Barack Obama’s selection of Leon Panetta as CIA director was puzzlement. After all, Panetta has no real background in intelligence gathering or analysis.
But on reflection, Obama’s decision may make sense on the merits. The CIA’s primary importance these days arguably has less to do with intelligence gathering or analysis than with political gamesmanship. The CIA’s highest profile assessments this decade—that Iran stopped its efforts to develop nuclear weapons and that Iraq possessed WMD—weren’t important as reflections of reality. Indeed, it is quite doubtful that either assessment accurately reflected reality. The assessments were important because the CIA made them and because, as such, they could serve as justification for action or inaction.
In this context, it is understandable that, in selecting a CIA director, Obama would place a higher premium on political acumen than on background in intelligence.
I don’t mean to suggest that intelligence gathering is peripheral to the CIA’s mission. But it does seem these days that the CIA is a political actor first and an intelligence operation second. The selection of Panetta may reflect this “post-modern” reality.
It may, in addition, reflect the plausible view that one need not have experience in the field of intelligence to run an agency that does an effective job of gathering and assessing intelligence.
January 7
Here is another apt comment on Panetta by an L-dotter who, being a superficial soul like me, focuses on the meaning of Panetta’s appearance:
Reply 8—Posted by: IdahoJoe, 1/7/2009 12:13:42 AM
I think it’s only logical to select Panetta for CIA director—he looks just like Inspector Clouseau.
Jim N. writes:
This article by Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy In Media (with which I wholeheartedly agree) implies very strongly what was my own immediate suspicion when I heard about the Panetta appointment: it is no accident and no faux pas. I believe Obama wants a neutered, ineffectual CIA, for several reasons:
1. He intends to conduct American foreign policy through the United Nations and other international organizations. A hamstrung CIA can’t provide effective resistance to the machinations of these internationalist, one-world groups.
2. To provide political cover in case a terrorist attack or other calamity occurs due to said neutering (“Huh? What? I didn’t know this was going on. Nobody told me.”)
3. To provide a sacrificial lamb he can offer up in place of himself. He will be blamed for the stupidity of his appointment, but he will say he has now learned from his mistakes, etc.
4. To please his leftist base.
I realize this sounds somewhat conspiratorial, but I can’t see how there can be any doubt about the left’s globalist intentions for this country, nor do I see any other reasonable explanation for Panetta’s appointment. Obama’s not an idiot, so it’s not just stupidity, nor is the CIA chief a figurehead position. If it was, Presidents wouldn’t fire the Director when mischief occurs (is that why they call it mis-chief?). They would go after the people who screwed up.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 06, 2009 05:06 PM | Send