(Military Times) Op-Ed: How the Panetta Choice Impacts the Military

[unhappycamper]

How the Panetta Choice Impacts the Military
Brandon Friedman | January 07, 2009

When former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta was announced as President-elect Obama's choice to head the CIA, it's safe to say that all but a few insiders were surprised by the pick. For a guy with little actual intelligence experience, the selection struck some as inappropriate --especially given the expected operational overhaul that's going to occur at Langley.

But in the past 24 hours, a number of well respected former CIA officials and officers have also come out to praise the decision -- including 22-year clandestine service veteran Robert Baer, who wrote on TIME.com that Panetta "is exactly what the CIA needs right now."

Because I'm no intelligence professional, I'll refrain from passing judgment on what it means to have an outsider take over the reins of Central Intelligence. But as an Army officer, I can attest to the impact that this choice will have on our military. And it's a clear one:

Leon Panetta is adamantly against the use of torture. And when the nation is involved with two ongoing counterinsurgency operations, that's huge. As VoteVets.org Chairman Jon Soltz wrote this morning on The Huffington Post:

One of the things I've learned is that foreigners don't differentiate between the CIA, FBI, Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force, or civilian. To them, there is only "America."


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,182497,00.html



uhc comment:

About Brandon Friedman



Brandon Friedman is the author of The War I Always Wanted, and has served since 2007 as the Vice Chairman of VoteVets.org -- a 100,000-member organization dedicated to getting veterans elected to public office.

As an infantry officer in the Army's 101st Airborne Division, Brandon led a rifle platoon into Afghanistan's Shah-e-Kot Valley as part of Operation Anaconda in the months after 9/11. A year later, he commanded a platoon during the invasion of Iraq -- leading troops during combat and counterinsurgency operations in Hillah, Baghdad, and Tal Afar throughout 2003. Since leaving active duty in 2004, Brandon has promoted national security issues and veterans affairs across a wide variety of media outlets, including ABC News, the Associated Press, CNN, MSNBC, and C-SPAN. He is currently the Editor of VetVoice -- a blog on politics and the military.

Brandon holds a BA in History from Louisiana State University and an MPA in Public Policy and Administration from the University of Texas at Dallas.

[adadem]

1. Thanks, interesting n/t

[Peace Patriot]

2. How do you think Leon Panetta got to be a member of Bush Sr's Iraq Study Group?

By being a budget director?

He is deep CIA, is my guess. A civilian could not hope to heal the wounds inflicted by Rumsfeld/Cheney. This an internal CIA matter. And Obama is not a stupid man. Panetta is not a civilian.

I've posted my other reasons in my DU Journal. All guesses, to be sure. But good ones, I think.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Peace%20Patriot

It doesn't surprise me at all that, "...in the past 24 hours, a number of well respected former CIA officials and officers have also come out to praise the decision...". I expected it. This was a very, very smart pick. Someone so deep nobody even knew.

I don't care much for the CIA, nor for most of Obama's appointments. But if we are going to have a secret organization, supposedly to keep us safe, I'd rather have one headed by a 'white hat' CIA (some loyalty to the rule of law) than by a Bushwhack (treasonous, conscienceless scofflaw). Panetta has said that torture is wrong, illegal and counter-productive. That is the issue around which all else has swirled, in the war between Rumsfeld/Cheney & their rogue operatives, and the professional CIA which sees its job as preventing wars, not manufacturing them. I think Panetta is of this latter school, and it's good that he's now in charge.

Doesn't mean we're not going to continue to be ruled by war profiteers and global corporate predators. But at least some limits will be placed on our government's service to them. If we want liberation from all this, we will start by ridding ourselves of 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY voting systems, with the code owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls.

Until then, expect large secret budgets--for good or for ill--humongous military budgets for threats that do not exist, and big, unaccountable bailouts for the super-rich, and smaller, minor helps for the poor. Also, expect the return of the bad guys, and installation of their choice of emperors, in 2012.