Needlenose

Leon Panetta to head the CIA?  What a weird pick.  He’s a nice enough guy (I’ve met him twice), and certainly knows his way around D.C.  Unlike Feinstein, I don’t fault him for his lack of intelligence bureau experience – I’d consider that a positive, given the recent abject failures of the CIA.

However, he strikes me as sort of a party apparatchik, certainly of the more competent sort, whereas I think the job requires somebody with some fire in the belly, who is willing and able to do some ‘clearing out of the deadwood.’  More importantly, the head of the agency needs to change it’s focus and direction, to move away from Cold War legacy things like signal intelligence back to old-fashioned field agents and counter-insurgency work.

I really don’t see Panetta doing more than filling the seat and filling out paperwork.  D.C. Buddy has a higher opinion of the man (knowing him a bit better as he does), and feels Panetta will help in getting $ and intelligence-related legislation through Congress.  But after Daschle, this is the next most disappointing pick for me.

Heading home for the holidays? Dreading the inevitable collision with that Libertarian uncle or redneck cousin where you both unavoidably launch into a heated, and family-alienating political discussion after he/she taunts you with Bush? Well, this year stay cool and stay on-message with these handy talking points on so-called conservative issues:

Fiscal responsibility:
* $1/2 trillion-dollar budget deficit and climbing, of which:
* $300 billion is pure government welfare pork
* $100-200 billion additional pork pending in the Energy and Prescription Drug bills
- Remind him/her that Clinton balanced the budget

Small government
* 12.5% growth in Federal Government last year
- Remind him/her that Gore, working for Clinton, trimmed 300K federal jobs and reduced Federal spending 3% (as share of GDP)

Fighting Terrorism
* Where’s Osama?
* Why are the Taliban operating out of Pakistan with impunity?
* Why weren’t the CIA/FBI heads and their staffs sacked?
* What happened to the 9/11 investigation?
* Why does Bush withhold information about possible Saudi complicity in 9/11
* Why is Al Qaeda still blowing things up around the world?

The War in Iraq
* War crimes (on the basis of Geneva Conventions) due to U.S. criminal negligence:
# 1,500 civilians killed in uncontrolled looting following the fall of Baghdad; insufficient forces on the ground
# 12,000 unique, priceless artifacts looted from the Iraqi Art Museum
# 1 million unique, priceless historical documents burned in the Iraqi National Library
# 8kg of uranium missing from looted Tuwaitha reactor; enough for several ‘dirty bombs’
# Thousands of Arabs ‘ethnically cleansed’ from Kurdistan
# Dozens killed in ‘reprisal’ slayings and ethnic civil war
# Destruction of houses, farms and other personal property in punative raids
# Hundreds of Iraqis being held without trial or tribunal
# Occupational Authority making significant changes to Iraqi legal system
# Occupational Authority making long term committments of Iraqi resources
*War botched:
# Where’s Hussein?
# Where are the WMD?
# 294 casualties since war ‘ended’
# Soldiers suffering dozens of daily guerilla attacks, the pace is increasing
# Guerillas have easy access to Hussein’s old arsenal
# Large political bloc militias still run free and armed
# No credible Coalition Government has been set up
# Strong-arm tactics appear to be further alienating the civilians
- Remind him/her that Clinton won the war against Serbia without a single U.S. soldier lost

Civil Liberties
* Patriot Act ‘sneak and peak’ provisions clearly unconstitutional
* DeLay used Homeland Security to spy on the movements Texas state legislators
* Why do Bush and war opponents end up on ‘no-fly’ lists?
* The FBI is spying on anti-war protestors
*The Secret Service is selectively enforcing ‘free speech areas’ – America is a free speech area!

I’m under no illusion that I can convince any of my reactionary relations to budge from their simplistic world-view, and I won’t try to persuade you that you will have any better luck. We can, however, potentially discourage them from contributing to Bush Co., and maybe, if they are lazy as well as misguided, discourage them from casting a vote next year. BTW, South Knox Bubba has a more comprehensive list of more general Bush failings that might be useful in political discussions with your non-rabid relations.