But now that I've heard that one of my Senator's, Dianne Feinstein, doesn't seem to like the pick, what I can say? I feel a hell of a lot better about it.
This is what her office sent TPM Alum, Spencer Ackerman over at the Washington Independent.
“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director. I know nothing about this, other than what I’ve read,” said Senator Feinstein, who will chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the 111th Congress.
“My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”
Oooh, icy.
David Corn, of Mother Jones, was just a little warmer:
Panetta is an even-tempered and highly regarded Washington player--kind of a Mr. Fixit in a nice suit. He is also a zero-tolerance critic of the use of torture, and he considers waterboarding--a tactic used by the CIA--to be torture. A year ago, he wrote in The Washington Monthly:
According to the latest polls, two-thirds of the American public believes that torturing suspected terrorists to gain important information is justified in some circumstances. How did we transform from champions of human dignity and individual rights into a nation of armchair torturers? One word: fear.Fear is blinding, hateful, and vengeful. It makes the end justify the means. And why not? If torture can stop the next terrorist attack, the next suicide bomber, then what's wrong with a little waterboarding or electric shock?The simple answer is the rule of law....Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground.We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances..It doesn't get much clearer than this. (Take that, Jack Bauer!) By picking Panetta, Obama is repudiating the waterboarding ways of the Bush-Cheney administration.
As a member of the Iraq Study Group, Panetta joined with other Establishment poohbahs to criticize George W. Bush's prosecution of the Iraq war. And in a newspaper op-ed, he noted that the Iraq war "could give al-Qaeda a base for terrorism throughout this critical region."
