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?
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If they hate on him, then we know (at least a bit) that it is a good choice, lol.
But one wonders what qualifications he has to be head spook.
Personally, I was hoping she’d get the job.
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.
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. 😉
The Leon E. Panetta Central Intelligence Agency. . .?
Panetta seems like a take charge kind of guy… 😉
Therefore, I am for him.