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such good intelligence people. He was a member of Bush Sr's Iraq Study Group. You don't get there by being a budget director or White House chief staff. You get there because you are deep CIA. The quacks on Capitol Hill are coming from people like Diane Feinstein, who never met a Bushwhack torturer she didn't like.
This is a struggle over whose interests are going to be served by the CIA: the war profiteers, warmongers and fascist thugs that Cheney/Rumsfeld tried to install (with help from war profiteers like Feinstein), or the American people and their overwhelming desire for peace. I don't believe that Panetta is a civilian. He was in the army for only two years--1964 to 1966--the years of escalation in Vietnam, went in as a 1st lieutenant, and came out two years later as a 2nd lieutenant with a special commendation. What did he do for that promotion and commendation? Intelligence work, very likely. I suspect also that he did not like what he found in military intelligence--a bunch of unabashed warmongers--and quickly got out, and into the non-military intelligence service, where he has been ever since--as a Congressman, in the Clinton White House, as a Clinton appointee to the president's Commission on Foreign Languages and International Relations, and at his "international policy institute" in Monterey at Ft. Ord (a former military base). That CA state university at Monterey is pretty much his creation. Monterey is also home to the CIA/military foreign language school (which may be a front for the CIA spy school).
The CIA created the war on Vietnam, but by 1966 anybody with any common sense knew that it was a horrendous mistake. It took the country ten years--and two million deaths in Southeast Asia, and more than 55,000 U.S. soldier deaths--for it to be brought to a close, by the Vietnamese winning it. Given Panetta's general progressive views, I suspect that he was appalled by that debacle, and may have been part of a group who worked to change CIA culture. There were more horrendous activities to come--but there has always been a group within the CIA who opposed them, and eventually succeeded, circa Jimmy Carter, to change the policy on assassination of foreign leaders and topplings of democratic governments--also horrible slaughters like the one in Guatemala--that characterized the Reagan regime. In both cases--Reagan and Bush Jr--there have been rogue operatives, empowered by these lawless traitor presidents, operating parallel to, and outside of, the CIA. People like Oliver North and Michael Ladeen--rabid NeoCons. Inside the CIA, at the beginning of the Bush Jr. junta, there was a culture of professionals who believed that their job was to prevent war, not manufacture it. They clashed with Rumsfeld and Cheney and their rogue operators (out of Rumsfeld's "Office of Special Plans"). Valerie Plame is a good example--and her 20 years in development WMD counter-proliferation project (the one outed by Cheney). She, as far as I can tell, genuinely believed in preventing the spread of WMDs. Cheney/Rumsfeld intended to, a) lie about them (in order to invade Iraq), and b) trade in them. They prefer a world armed to the teeth, in which the law of the jungle prevails. Torture for fun and profit (in my opinion) is part of their hideous culture.
I think this is one promise that Obama intends to keep--ending U.S. torture of prisoners. Did you notice Cheney defending torture the other day? That's what this appointment is about. Panetta is anti-torture. He has called it both wrong and illegal, and counter-productive. What is a "former budget director" doing issuing policy statements on matters like this? He is 'white hat' CIA--that is my opinion. I want to stress this. I'm just guessing, but I think this is a good guess. He has been appointed to stop rogue operations and bring some order, civility and proper purpose back to the CIA.
I may profoundly oppose the existence of such a secret organization. Setting up the Vietnam War, and training people to murder leftists in South America and other regions, isn't the half of what they have done. I think they murdered JFK, and probably also RFK and MLK, or, at least, some element within the CIA was involved in those assassinations, and possibly Director Allen Dulles. It is an anti-democratic organization, no matter how well-behaved some of its operatives and leaders may have tried to become as the result of CIA-instigated horrors and mistakes. But I do think it makes a significant difference, in the amount of grief the U.S. causes around the world, and at home, what the CIA rules are. I think that is what is at issue with the Panetta appointment. I think he is an experienced intelligence officer, possibly very high up within that secret world, and is coming to the rescue of the professionals--the linguists, those versed in foreign cultures, those who actually do support democracy and a peaceful foreign policy--who have been shoved aside.
This is NOT to say that the CIA won't be in the service of multinational corporations including war profiteers. The latter have bled us dry, as to war profiteering. There isn't anything left to loot. So they may be in abeyance for a while. But even in abeyance, they suck up most of our resources. The CIA will continue to support that. I think the organization is premised on strong U.S. military clout, though the CIA--in the eyes of someone like Panetta (and maybe even Bush Sr)--has the mission of preventing its use or at least its waste. And Obama's appointment of Eric Holder as A.G. certainly points to the continued use of U.S. diplomacy, spying and military resources to promote multinational corporate policy. (He was Chiquita International's death squad attorney.) I have no illusions about the CIA, but I certainly prefer a CIA that has some respect for the rule of law, and for the ideals of our society, to one that does not. Rumsfeld was trying to create one that does not, and when he met resistance, created the OSP (his own spy/dirty tricks shop). Panetta's job is to heal that wound. And I'm sorry, but no civilian could possibly hope to do that. And I don't think Obama is an idiot--far from it. He knows who Panetta really is. To reveal it would blow the cover off of things he may have done. I also think that fascists like Feinstein know this very well, and are playing a corpo/fascist media P.R. game, possibly at the expense of U.S. national security, in order to warp Obama policy toward their hideous fascist culture.
To repeat: This is my SPECULATION. But I think that if we revisit this a year from now, that the scuttlebutt we hear about the CIA (and that's all that we ever get to hear) will be that the professionals are back in charge, and the loyal-to-the Constitution 'white hat' faction is happy with Panetta.
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