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Why Leon Panetta? — 24 Comments

  1. “Panetta is worse than incompetent; that’s why Obama picked him, and named him to Defense later (the latter appointment was to oversee budget cuts). It has been a pattern for the president to tend to nominate people who lack actual expertise and who are political operatives loyal to Obama”

    Au contraire! Panetta is incompetent in military matters but not in fiscal matters. Obama intends to gut our military, to reduce our nuclear missile capacity to less than China’s. Obama intends to do that through budget cuts. Panetta is absolutely the financial pencil pusher for that job.

  2. Panetta is efficient in being a company man (i.e. a bureaucrat). He knows DC and the players. He dutifully carries out orders. He is the buffer between Obama and those who often respond with “He wants us to do what?!?!?”

    Now, Obama tells him the ROE in the region, Panetta complies with zero pushback. When it all goes FUBAR, the phone rings, and Panetta dutifully falls on his sword.

    Obama’s inclination for a team full of yes-men/career operatives is also exemplified in him letting Tom Donilon (no military or foreign policy experience) push out the incomparable former Marine Corp General James Jones as NSA

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/08/AR2010100807123.html

  3. incomparable former Marine Corp General James Jones” ?

    “As the National Security Adviser, General James Jones is not known as a friend of the Jewish State. It was Jones who put together the team of Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski to meet with the President and advise him to impose a solution on Israel.”

    Scowcroft and Bush seniors military adviser and , Carter’s… Brzezinski is arguably the most left leaning pacifist to ever advise an American President. That provides real insight into Jones’ views.

    On the other hand, according to Bob Woodwards new book ‘Obama’s Wars’; Jones “Resented the president’s political aides including Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff; David Axelrod, senior adviser; Robert Gibbs, press secretary; and Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert, National Security Council officials. Calling them “the water bugs,” “the Politburo,” the “Mafia” or “the campaign set.””

    He’s also on record stating that, “If we don’t succeed in Afghanistan, you’re sending a very clear message to the terrorist organizations that the U.S., the U.N. and the 37 countries with troops on the ground can be defeated.”

    So a mixed record but IMO little basis for extending the label of ‘incomparable’…

  4. I can have as much fun as the next guy psychoanalyzing the president but a little goes a long way and too much obfuscates the obvious.

    Obama hasn’t contempt just for the generals, he has it generally for this country and its institutions. The Panetta’s and Donilon’s will not challenge him and are as likely to make a mash of their responsibilities for which the have no qualifications. The question is which is the primary motive and which frosts the cake? Obama has done as much with the DOJ installing a perfectly useful radical who would make the DOJ indistinguishable in its aspirations from that of the New Black Panther Party.

    The malevolent motives of Obama toward this country are known; the question seems to be has he a preference for the dismantling — active demolition or passive/aggresive incompetence?

  5. Is there anyone outside his immediate circle of family, political and otherwise, who does not meet with Obama’s contempt?

  6. I remember historian Doris Kearnes Goodwin, gushing over Obama supposedly stocking his cabinet with a Lincolnesque “team of rivals”. The implicit flush of her gush: Obama is wonderfully shrewd.

  7. Well said, Neo.

    In another thread I referred to Panetta as a political hack. I thought I might get some push back on that harsh statement, but maybe there is a consensus.

    No one can accuse Obama of lacking consistency when it comes to poor judgement. He appointed this man, who had no intelligence experience, to DCIA; and then despite no management experience, save two years as OMB, and four years herding cats in Clinton’s White House, to Secretary of Defense. He is, of course, a lawyer.

    To rub our noses in it, Panetta is provided with a personal DOD jet to fly him home to Monterey, Ca every weekend. We do this, presumably, because he is the most qualified man in the whole country to run defense, and he demands this little concession as his price to serve. It would have been nice if he and Pelosi could have jet-pooled to the west coast. It will really be nice when they are both just citizens and have to pay their own way.

    This election could provide multi-benefits. When we evict Obama from the White House we simultaneously rid the government of an infestation of trolls.

    bad haikumenter, thanks for reminding us. Of course, Doris Kearns Goodwin is a serial gusher over all things Obama.

  8. Just breaking in the last half hour on FOX–the senior level, interagency, Counterterrorism Security Group–established after the terrorist attacks against our Embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole–and created to deal with just such situations as Benghazi, was never activated by the WH to deal with Benghazi.

  9. Re: My post above.

    To have activated the Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG) would have been to admist to the whole workld that the attacks on our Consulate in Benghazi were Terrorism, and to admit that these attacks were terrorist would be to admit that, despite the killing of Bin Laden, Obama’s entire Foreign Policy approach to the Middle East and Terrorism was a failure, Muslim Terrorism was alive and well and, in fact, on the march once more.

    So, the CSG was not activated, and no help was sent, our people died, and I assume that it was coldly and cynically calculated in the White House that, with the complicity of the MSM, their nonsensical and threadbare cover story could hold, that this would all died down, that Obama & Co. could just slide by until they won a successful election and, then, they could somehow deal with the fallout.

  10. “… Obama’s entire Foreign Policy approach to the Middle East and Terrorism was a failure, Muslim Terrorism was alive and well and, in fact, on the march once more.”

    Indeed. I repeat myself, but will reiterate that the debacle in Benghazi is not going to fade away. It is now and will remain a burning tire around BHO’s neck. Time for BHO & Michelle to go back to sweet home Hawaii.

    13 minutes of bliss: http://tinyurl.com/7rkmvrs

  11. America the great, the beautiful, the absorbing junior, the swelling beast, can you imahine, for lots of the sweets what has been forgotten, what has been steamed clean, and the purpose of Mr. Wolf, the cleaner, who shall rest us underneath the waters, so history will repeat amd will not state, that once again, we failed, but will try, again.

    Yet . . . the end is not reached; the cycle may be breached

    this time.

  12. Re: General Ham.

    The Washington Times quotes a DOD spokesman as saying that General Ham–who has told a member of Congress that he never received orders to come to the rescue of our citizens under attack at our Consulate in Benghazi–and who was abruptly replaced as head of AFRICOM in the wake of the Benghazi fiasco, is now retiring (http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/robbins-report/2012/oct/29/general-center-benghazi-gate-controversy-retiring/)

    Something’s fishy here, and like the whole Benghazi disaster, stinks.

  13. P.S. According to Congressman Chaffetz, General Ham told him that he “did not get an order” to rescue the people in Benghazi i.e. this was Ham’s way of confirming that “no such order was given,” and perhaps that was why Ham was abruptly replaced.

  14. I think that VP “Crazy Joe” Biden summed up the essence of the entire Obama Administration the other day, when he excreted the noisome saying, “I’m giving you the whole load today.”

  15. Petraeus is not an exception and he is also a poor choice for CIA head. His arrogance in thinking that the surge that worked in a flat Iraq could work in a mountainous Afghanistan was a tactical failure.
    My hopes are that Bolton is the next CIA head.

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