Surprised there was no front page item on the Panetta book. The leading Democrats not invested emotionally or financially in the military industrial complex need to get off their asses and wage a counter offensive against democrats like Dianne Feinstein , Hillary Clinton, Panetta(a Clinton crony who Obama inexplicably gave a lot of importance to- turns out to be as bad as his Geithner fiasco)? Their soundbites is going to hurt the effectiveness of the rest of the Obama presidency and will do more harm than good even if they truly believe in their own pearls of wisdom on how to attack the bad guys in the middle east.
I wonder if Hillary is still steaming that she took so much heat in the Benghazi issue and this is her way of self preservation and people like Panetta are reinforcing their loyalty with the Clintons by piling on in a tag team effort to pave the way for wise Hillary to take the throne. Well Hillary, I might vote third party because I am so mad right now with this party. I hope Chuck Hagel shows more class than these bozos when his term ends. At least, Hagel won't be backstabbing the sitting president.
But I think Panetta is the worst of all. He was given two top posts by this President and achieved a prominence in the public that he wouldn't have had otherwise. And somehow the guy too tired to finish his term has the energy to finish a book so he can cash out on it.
A lot of the public has no appetite for more wars. Until recently, only the neocons and other rightwingers were shrilly attacking the President. They were getting some exposure thanks to the lazy and access hungry lapdog media. But they were still not convincing enough to make people forget the idiocy of the neocon wars. Now, we have leading Democrats, some who served under Obama, not even give him the courtesy of finishing his fucking term to start criticizing him about his agenda and his leadership style. Hey, you had 4 fucking years to give your input to Obama. You have two more years to let him finish his term and then you can open your mouth. You owe the President that much of a courtesy.
The only exception I would make is if you want to be a whistleblower about something really serious that if you don't say it, the government would get away with something awful. Let's say a scenario where an invasion of the US is imminent and that if you do not say something, your country is in danger. Or the president was involved in some corruption scandal.
The funny thing is Jim Webb is one of the conservatives in the party and even he didn't go that far to throw the President under the bus when he was questioned by a press guy. He kept saying he had issues with our foreign policy for 30 years which would be an equal opportunity basher not singling out Obama.
These democrats with their "mild" criticism have actually done a lot more damage to the good fight we are waging against the pro military industrial complex politicians in DC by reinforcing the beltway conventional wisdom peddled by people in the Cheney-Lieberman-McCain nexus. Oh gods, just imagine the swagger in their next pressers.
yes, I have to bash Obama for some leadership failures. But it's not because of his reluctance to commit troops in the middle east(I thank him for saving the country billions in wasted war expenditure). I have to criticize him for hiring a bunch of candidates who end up stabbing him in the back. I criticize him for his inability to get this Democratic party to take advantage of the super majority they had for a brief period when they shamelessly kowtowed to that smug Lieberman for the sake of that majority despite Lieberman endorsing McCain.
Rise up Democrats and be heard on CNN and make sure you counter the fucking villians who ruined the 2000s with a disastrous war when we could have been using that money and time to find solutions in other areas. A dozen years later, and we still haven't vanquished those neocons fully despite so many of their predictions coming out wrong.