'His only enemies are fellow Americans'

About three weeks old, but I just turned this up today. Columnist Gerald Warner positively shreds Barack Obama over the release of the "torture" memos and in general "cosying up to all the bad guys":

If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.

Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.

And that's just for openers. Great stuff...read the whole thing.

Leon Panetta, Spymaster

Emboldened by the criticism that wasn't, Barack Obama went ahead and named party hack Leon Panetta to Director of Central Intelligence.

I think Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star cartoonist Clay Jones summed up this choice nicely yesterday.

Leon Panetta for DCI? Really?

You've got to be kidding me. Barack Obama has picked Leon Panetta to head up CIA.

Leon Panetta, Barack Obama's surprise choice to head the CIA, clearly isn't someone with much hands-on national security or intelligence experience. But no one disputes that the man knows government.

[ ... ]

"It is true that he doesn't have an intelligence background. But he certainly dealt with intelligence. In the Iraq Study Group, we dealt with it every day. He certainly dealt with it as chief of staff," said Democrat Lee Hamilton, former chairman of the House International Relations Committee and chairman of the Iraq Study Group. Panetta brings an "outside perspective" to the job, he said.

In other words, his "experience" in intelligence is as a consumer of intelligence product, not as a producer of it. There's a vast and significant difference between the two. Being a consumer of fine wine doesn't mean you know jack shit about making it.

Even fellow California Democrat Dianne Feinstein isn't sold:

Fellow Californian Sen. Dianne Feinstein, set to chair the Select Committee on Intelligence, indicated that the choice caught her off guard.

"I know nothing about this other than what I read. My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time," she said in a statement.

Great...a partisan hack and presidential lapdog at CIA. What could possibly go wrong?