Gird Your Loins

At a time in our history when the country is confronted with increasing global unrest and hostility, Obama has gone ahead and nominated former Clinton Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, as Director of the CIA. With little actual intel experience, albeit lots of administrative skills, where will Panetta's appointment leave the US?

Let's see. Panetta was around during the 90's when the Clinton adminstration dropped the ball in combatting growing extremist operations, allowing Al Queda to flourish and ultimately carry out it's most heinous attacks on US soil. Since then, with a reshuffling of the CIA, most experts agree that current CIA Director Hayden has increased morale at the beleagured agency. Fortunately he will leave it in much better shape than he found it.

We've got terrorists in Afghanstan and in an increasingly dangerous Pakistan, Iran going nuclear, Russia once again boldly rearing it's head, and the crazy Dear Leader still in charge of nuclear North Korea. Our intel services are going to be vital to our survival and they will be stretched thin, as our enemies span the globe, and are licking their chops at the prospect of the new, inexperienced, President-elect coming into office at a time when the US is on it's knees economically. While focus needs to be on the economy at home, we cannot for a minute take our eyes off of the enemies abroad. Not the best time to pick someone with no experience on the ground to direct intelligence operations, particularly since Obama himself demonstrates such naivete in his world views. As Joe Biden warned us, we'd better gird our loins.