What the hell? No one else wanted the damn job? Steve Clemons makes this connection:
Watch for Petraeus to focus on modifying the CIA's role in supporting counter-insurgency challenges and drone-heavy terrorist disruption campaigns.Oh goody...that makes me feel real warm and fuzzy.. NOT.
Panetta is one of those career politicians..the non-elected variety. ThinkProgress, via The Hill has this to say about Leon as the new SecDef:
President Obama’s decision to nominate Leon Panetta to be the next Secretary of Defense may signal steep defense cuts are on the way. While current Secretary Robert Gates has been largely unwilling to rethink the size of the defense budget, Panetta is expected to carry out the president’s goal of cutting $400 billion from defense spending over the next 12 years.Whatever, they never really cut defense spending, I don't give a shit who says it.
As for General Davy, putting his ass in charge of the CIA is the militarization of that department in a more obvious fashion. As Glen Greenwald puts it A more militarized CIA for a more militarized America, and I agree:
Of course, like so many Democratic objections to Bush policies, that was then and this is now. Yesterday, President Obama announced -- to very little controversy -- that he was nominating Gen. David Petraeus to become the next CIA Director. The Petraeus nomination raises all the same concerns as the Hayden nomination did, but even more so: Hayden, after all, had spent his career in military intelligence and Washington bureaucratic circles and thus was a more natural fit for the agency; by contrast, Petraues is a pure military officer and, most of all, a war fighting commander with little background in intelligence. But in the world of the Obama administration, Petraeus' militarized, warrior orientation is considered an asset for running the CIA, not a liability.
That's because the CIA, under Obama, is more militarized than ever, as devoted to operationally fighting wars as anything else, including analyzing and gathering intelligence. This morning's Washington Post article on the Petraeus nomination -- headlined: "Petraeus would helm an increasingly militarized CIA" -- is unusual in presenting such a starkly forthright picture of how militarized the U.S. has become under the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner:
Gen. David H. Petraeus has served as commander in two wars launched by the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. If confirmed as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Petraeus would effectively take command of a third -- in Pakistan.
Petraeus's nomination comes at a time when the CIA functions, more than ever in its history, as an extension of the nation's lethal military force.
CIA teams operate alongside U.S. special operations forces in conflict zones from Afghanistan to Yemen. The agency has also built up a substantial paramilitary capability of its own. But perhaps most significantly, the agency is in the midst of what amounts to a sustained bombing campaign over Pakistan using unmanned Predator and Reaper drones.
Since Obama took office there have been at least 192 drone missile strikes, killing as many as 1,890 militants, suspected terrorists and civilians. Petraeus is seen as a staunch supporter of the drone campaign, even though it has so far failed to eliminate the al-Qaeda threat or turn the tide of the Afghan war. .
Shit, just when you hope Obama will pull his militaristic head out of his ass...he shoves in up there even further.
