Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Leon Panetta was the congressman for my area before he 'moved up' during the Clinton administration and I commented on his selection this morning while writing my synopsis of Travus T. Hipp's Morning news and commentary:

(Pardon my harshness of opinion on the Bush administration, but I believe history will prove me correct)

" I had the opportunity to hear mr. Panetta speak at a local gathering quite a few years ago while he was my congressman. In my opinion, he has more intelligence than the last 8 CIA directors put together and showed a profound interest in the humanitarian aspects of our relations with the Mexican community of the area, and the rest of the world. This man must find our Guantanamo concentration camp, torture and the like abhorrent. I couldn’t imagine for a second that he would ever allow the use of waterboarding or illegal abuse of ANYONE on his watch, and in my opinion IS EXACTLY the kind of ‘new blood’ with OTHER IDEAS the US government needs to dig ourselves out of the public diplomacy quagmire we’ve allowed to be dug for ourselves by the current war criminals running the US government.

And for those who say he lacks ‘experience’…
From the Wikipedia entry linked above:

Panetta was instrumental in creating CSU Monterey by converting Fort Ord, where he was chief of operations and planning of the intelligence section when he was in the army, into the university. "

The fellow I transcribe for used the Panetta appointment as the take-off point of his commentary this morning:

[January 06 2009] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The Obama ‘Change Machine’ Is Going To Have To Change The Democratic Political Machine… Case In Point, The Appointment Of Leon Panetta, Our New Director Of The CIA

It's audio. Approximately 12 minutes of news/commentary posted to my site and at Archive.org.

897 episodes and counting...

Transformation of the Gap and coping with sophisticated global terrorism requires sophisticated IW. There are many players with the technical IW knowledge, but fewer with the talent for high visibility public participation which is necessary in our era of global 'every-man' communications resources. I think Panetta has those IW insights and talents. As for Obama, it takes one to know one.