While it can be said that excerpts sometimes fail to capture the full favor of many political writers, choosing to spotlight only a few paragraphs of the work of digby often feels like a crime. This is so in the current instance because digby has two interrelated major points to make, and I'm only focusing on one. So, as usual, I highly recommend you click on through to read the whole piece, from which I have extracted this:
When I see someone like ex-company man Michael Scheuer whimpering as he did today on CNN about the Panetta appointment, I see all the old arguments being pulled off the shelf:
MICHAEL SCHEUER, FMR. CIA OFFICER: I think the impression that will be brought in the intelligence community is that the Obama administration means to punish those people who were defending America through the rendition program or through Guantanamo Bay.
As many of us have ruefully observed, nobody has said anything about punishment. But the intelligence community are old hands at this kind of bureaucratic battle and they know how to rally the political establishment around them, which I think is quite clear by the fact that a highly respected bipartisan fetishist like Panetta can suddenly be seen as a controversial choice simply because the intelligence community insists on running their own show. We've seen this movie before.
I wish I believed that this Democratic congress could possibly be more effective than the Pike and Church Committees of yore, but the thought makes me laugh. (The only thing they seem to get exercised about is being dissed by Rod Balgojevich.) And while Seymour Hersh is still out there doing his thing and there have been fine examples of the press revealing illegal government activity these past few years, it has only penetrated the government to the extent that they are willing to disavow torture and eventually close down Guantanamo --- or so we think.
And it was press complicity that led us into an illegal and unnecessary war in Iraq (and ironically Watergate hero Bob Woodward who created such a hagiography around Bush that he was nearly unassailable for nearly four years of violent and unchoate leadership.) Nobody wants to delve too deeply or "look in the rearview mirror" or "play the blame game" because their primary duty is always to protect each other. And they are all guilty to one degree or another.
Michael Scheuer says that the choice of Panetta will be seen as a move to "punish" those in the agency. But what he means is that it's a choice to punish the village. Obama broke the rules and the pressure on him and Panetta to reassure them will be intense. Scheuer laid it all out pretty clearly on tonight's News Hour when he said this:
MICHAEL SCHEUER: The American -- you know, this whole business on rendition and prisons and the rest of it has been a very politicized issue. The fact is, America is much safer today for the people that have been rendered and imprisoned.
Mr. Obama, Mr. Panetta, Mr. McGovern are all very good at wanting to destroy that function, that operation that has protected America. They have nothing to replace it with.
He looked like a total psychopath when he said that. |
Rendition, secret prisons, torture, outrageous tribunals. Yeah, these recruiting posters for terrorists sure make me feel safer. The incoming Obama administration has nothing to replace them with? Puhleez. How about we replace them with the kind of policies and approaches to the rule of law that people like Scheuer are supposed to be defending instead of denigrating?
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