I’m thinking the Gerald Warner “President Pantywaist” blog entry may have been over the top, and, anyway, I had really wanted to quote Joseph Finder’s article from the Daily Beast on Leon Panetta’s incompetence at the CIA, but Finder pulled his punches so much, you’d almost have to copy-paste the whole article to get to a “contention.”
So instead I’ll use Allahpundit‘s headline:
Leon Panetta’s an incompetent moron who’s jeopardizing U.S. security
…direct you to the Daily Beast article itself (required if gauzy reading) – and also to the Non-Zombie Contentions post by Daniel Halper on the same subject, which concludes:
The sad irony is that the Obama administration needs strong intelligence agencies. Obama has cut defense spending and generally seems wary of the armed services. This leaves a wide gap, so to speak, for heavy reliance on wide-reaching, covert intelligence agencies.
Obama’s ill-chosen reliance on Leon Panetta speaks volumes about the slipshod way in which vital national-security issues are handled in this administration.
Comments 19
I find Allahpundit a bit too subtle. Sometimes he’s hard to get a bead on.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Did anyone seriously expect better? I mean, really?
August 19th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Barbara, no one in their right mind could have expected better. Possibly the only worse choice on earth than Panetta for Director of Central Intelligence was Henry Waxman! Panetta, it is alleged, was appointed because he was not a CIA insider. There are, however, close to 250 million Americans who are simultaneously not CIA insiders and not inveterately partisan politicians. Any one of them would have been a better pick.
If Finder is to be believed – and there’s nothing about the toadying Panetta’s past that gainsays him – Panetta behaved exactly as he was supposed to behave in the eyes of the Democrats, including Obama. At the first hint of a “scandal,” rush to the Congress and bawl. Leon Panetta has been in Washington long enough to know very well that the odds of his breathless tale of Bush-Cheney-CIA perfidy going unleaked were worse than the odds of Joe Biden, a saddle on his back, winning the Preakness.
We have here the same malarkey-ridden scenario about to work its madcap way into the press as we did with the Plame non-affair. Will Panetta’s manifestly false start affect the intention to storm the CIA of a worm like Pelosi or Conyers or Durbin? Don’t bet on it. This race will be run.
August 20th, 2009 at 8:11 am
Colin, we have to find a better way of shoehorning these competing “Contentions” of the Day into a 24-h period than by fronting them with “Alternate,” “Alternate Alternate,” etc. On occasion, we have had two different Contentions of the Day, one from the previous day, vying for attention on the daily list. One could easily and carelessly comment on one thread thinking it the other.
No. I don’t have any useful suggestions. I’m not the one making the big money here, so there.
August 20th, 2009 at 8:43 am
As a Nevadan, I find it my duty to find someone who is booking Biden in the Preakness. He might be fun to include in a trifecta.
August 20th, 2009 at 9:56 am
@Barbara – Not a problem; see Took ‘em long enough…
August 20th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
@Barbara – Wanted.
August 20th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
@Joe NS – I suggest lifting a page from The Hunting of the Snark. ‘Fit the First’, ‘Fit the Second’, etc. seems *ahem* fitting.
August 20th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
@aelfheld – From Chapter 12 of Alice in Wonderland:
August 20th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Seems like they are all contentions. Maybe the winning contention of the day could be declared next day.
August 21st, 2009 at 10:00 am
Pulled my punches? Gauzy? Come on, man, no one else had the balls to report what I did. And I must have made my point — why else would the CIA be attacking me as they’re doing?
August 29th, 2009 at 12:20 am
@Joseph Finder – Which of your novels is best worth reading?
August 29th, 2009 at 12:29 am
The final words of the Daily Beast article were “probably wasn’t the best choice after all.” I suspect that Leon Panetta has had worse things said about him. Combing through the rest of the article, I was unable to find a quotable contention.
CIA attack? Where does one find out about this CIA attack?
August 29th, 2009 at 12:52 am
@CK MacLeod – Finder is a nutbag bs artist and not worth attacking.
August 30th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Could be. Small loss, no harm if so. At least he had the good grace to link josephfinder.com at his web-site.
Now, Joseph Finder the author wrote a useful and interesting article. Joseph Finder the ZC commenter mentioned something I haven’t heard of – the CIA supposedly attacking said author. At this point I remain agnostic and skeptical.
What oh what would James Jesus Angleton say? (not that we could trust it at face value)
August 30th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
@CK MacLeod – I guess you mean the Panetta article, not the ridiculous op-ed just published in the NYT.
Finder might shred his credibility less, perhaps, if he could explain why he allows his personal info to contain mention of his membership in the Association of Former Intelligence Professionals.
August 30th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Got to say, fuster, it’s one of your least appealing characteristics, they way you pass summary judgments on people without bothering to explain your grounds. Just calling the NY Op-Ed, which I hadn’t read until just now “ridiculous,” isn’t persuasive or interesting. And who cares what association he mentioned, or who knows whether it was even his decision to mention it or not?
I thought it was a reasonable op-ed, logical and well-argued, not the final word on the subject by any means. You’re just plugging up your ears against something you don’t like apparently. Or did you just finish reading some Andrew Sullivan or Glenn Greenwald piece that got your knickers in a twist around a bleeding heart mounted on a lance of infinite self-righteousness?
August 30th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Colin, can you generate a visual image of that for us?
August 30th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Sorry to have to keep telling the Tsar to stow the stuff about me regurgitating them talking points.
I’ve never read Sullivan. I’ve read a few things of Greenwald’s, none lately, and find him to be a good mind trapped in a pretty small person.
If I’ve been too brief for you about the Finder piece,sorry.
I, along with most of the people I talk with, agree with Finder that there’s some danger in prosecution and probably injustice if liability is solely placed on people working within guidelines given them by their superiors.
What is so ignorant and ill-founded in the opinion is the contention that prosecution can not fairly be brought because there was a review already conducted that resulted in only one case being brought.
When he goes to say that any further cases would be “…. a violation of the principle of estoppel.” he’s jumped the shark.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:12 am