Leon Panetta As CIA Chief! Huh?

For sure it's not good for the CIA to have it's charter sidetracked by a president's agenda as appears to have been done by President Bush. (The extent to which it's true is irrelevant to the point I want to make today.) But I can't think of a president who hasn't done that. Clinton gutted the agency and erected his now-famous 'sharing information' wall between the FBI and CIA. So our national security agencies' operations were significanly compromised because of his actions as well.

Now President-elect Obama wants Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director. Gads! A bureaucrat in charge of national security matters. That makes no more sense than putting a bureaucrat who never served in the military in charge of our military forces in Iraq and Afganistan. Our military is one arm of our war on terror. The CIA and FBI are other arms in that war which should be chartered, supported and equipped for maximum effectiveness protecting our national security interests at home and abroad.

Problem we now have with the CIA and FBI is the internal and external, national and international politicization of America's national security organizations and Obama will only make it worse, not better, by appointing an inexperienced person to this very important position.

Isn't it arguable that the agency responsible for intelligence gathering (including covert and overt operations in support of that objective) regarding the war on terror is one of the most important government agencies in our country right now? After all, our enemy in this war is sworn to and totally committed to our destruction. Diplomacy is pretty useless against a stateless enemy spread throughout the world which is committed to destroying us and is, by definition, difficult to identify and investigate. We are at high risk of serious harm even with an aggressive and totally effective national security policy and supporting agencies. We need THE BEST professionals in these agencies that we can find. It seems to me that bureaucrats are eminently unqualified for the CIA Director position, especially if they have no experience in that line of work.