Early reports had now-confirmed Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, a career politician who has left his CIA Director post, as a reformer being brought into the Pentagon with his experience as Office of Management and Budget Director, and an eye toward the sort of military spending cuts Robert Gates would never consider.
But Pentagon officials seem to be doing everything possible to dispell this viewpoint, insisting rather that Panetta intends to fight tooth and nail against military spending cuts, and believes that “it is a false choice between fiscal responsibility and national security.”
Of course at this point neither genuine security nor fiscal responsibility seem anywhere on the radar, and military spending levels that dwarf any other in the history of humankind are not only the norm, but are railed at by Pentagon officials as woefully insufficient.
But Panetta’s unanimous endorsement at the Senate was the first indication that he is not being brought in for radical change, and early reports from his Pentagon seem aimed at confirming that it is business as usual for a military locked in perpetual war across the globe.
Now seriously…does it surprise anyone that the MIC would never allow someone who might actually rein in the free-spending ever expanding military to be suggested for SecDef? Panetta (and Gates) have been around the inner workings of gov't for so long and are well schooled on whose game it really is they are playing. I imagine that the first major policy statement Panetta makes will be to complain that reducing, in any way or amount, the pile of money available to the Pentagon will guarantee that the enemies of the Fatherland – er, I mean Homeland, will succeed. We need more money to keep pace with the 100 or so al Qaeda still running around in Af-Pak.!!!!
Taken together with his successor at the CIA General Petraeus’ miraculous conversion to “enhanced interrogation techniques” this is a very depressing development. As a Californian the gloom was deepened by seeing Barbara Boxer cheering Panetta on in a replay of Feinstein’s endorsement of an AG who didn’t know if waterbobarding was torture. I would like to have at least one representative I can support with a clear conscience but, alas, it seems this is not to be.
And with Petreaus at the CIA, they will have to create an insurgency somewhere so they can counter it.
The people in power would never apoint someone that was a good person that would go against all they stand for money and murder.Forgot power.
God, this is so depressing. The life long political hacks, none of whom has a clue about the real world, have assumed the power to tell billions of people what they can and can't do. Their arrogance knows no limits. Panetta is merely the latest in a long line of such parasites.
These people are too repulsive for words.
Obama even though I think he is told what to say and do just like the puppets in some places in the world would never let someone his masters don't want to be in charge of the Pentigon.But its most likely most people we see and are told run things just do what they are told by hows realy in charge.A president that was not a seel out would have power if he could keep from being assasinated.The citizens no the corruption and the law says they should if smart stand up a fight for a new government.I think the power of the people is underestimated by the people themselfs.The government is scared of a rebellion against them because of the fact the military if they follow the constitution would stand with the citizens against a tyranical government like the one in power from the president to congrees all the way to normal police corruption is the norm.Not that all are corrupt but most and Americans are awakning just needs to happen faster or we will be victums of WW3.