Cities of the plain

By Capt. Fogg

There are people who give free speech a bad name, people who use any freedom the government protects to undermine and destabilize and overthrow that government and exploit the population -- and all for personal (and corporate) gain.

Such are the shadowy entities behind the multi-headed beast pumped into a frenzy by unaccountable and uncountable millions they get for the purpose: entities like SOCYBERTY.COM, whose recent post was sent to me by a breathless Republican eager to impart the secret knowledge that, no, President Obama did not give the order to enter Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan because he is a dithering, indecisive coward and the reins of government have been pried from his trembling, black hands. You see, Leon Panetta had to "override" Obama with the help of Cabinet members and that eye-rolling minstrel show clown is too afraid now to tell the truth. Holdouts like Valerie Jarfett aren't telling us either because of the "investigation back in Chicago," but there was a silent coup and Obama is no longer in control:

What Valerie Jarrett, and the president, did not know is that Leon Panetta had already initiated a program that reported to him –and only him, involving a covert on the ground attack against the compound.

Of course, no news agency, not ABC or NBC or FOX or CNN or BBC or Deutsche Welle or al freakin' Jazeera knows about this, only SOCYBERTY.COM and all the other PAC-funded heads of the same hydra who are cutting and pasting and posting these stories. Google it and you'll see. They have secret sources in the Cabinet, you know, who will commit treason only for them.

Sure, we can see it as the desperate death throes of a humiliated racist party, a wicked witch melting and hissing on the floor, but I can't forgive it and I can't forgive the people who e-mail it around the country like some titillating photo of some stoned starlet getting out of a limousine in a short skirt. I can't forgive, I can't forget, and while old Yahweh was willing to spare Sodom for the sake of ten good citizens, no God worth his scriptures would forgive a country that contained ten such unpunished liars as these.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Obama, Panetta, Petraeus

By Michael J.W. Stickings

President Obama shook up his national security team yesterday, notably moving CIA Director Leon Panetta to the Pentagon and Generalissimo David Petraeus to the CIA.

It was "a game of musical chairs," Slate's Fred Kaplan observed, though "under the circumstances, it's hard to imagine a shrewder set of moves, both politically and substantively."

Panetta is a Washington insider. Can he succeed at the Pentagon? Maybe. He certainly has credibility where it matters, on Capitol Hill:

The next defense secretary will have to wind down the wars without losing them and will almost certainly have to cut the budget without wreaking havoc in the Pentagon. It's a nightmare job for anyone, but Panetta has as much experience as anyone at carving out that sort of territory.

I don't much care for him, and he's come to be an apologist for the Bush-Obama national security state, but I suppose he has the political clout to lead what is undeniably a deeply political office. (Whether he manages to secure the trust and support of the military brass, not to mention of the rank-and-file, is another matter, though that may not matter given his political priorities in the months/years ahead.)

As for Petraeus, well, Obama had to do something with him, not least given his political inclinations, if not aspirations, and connections to the conservative/Republican foreign/military policy establishment:

Picking Petraeus to run the CIA is a move worthy of chess masters. He's been a wartime commander of one sort or another for eight years, almost non-stop. It's time for him to leave the battlefield; that was clear even to him. Yet for much of that time, he's also been a household name -- and widely hailed as the U.S. military's finest strategic mind in a generation. So the question -- which would have been vexing for any president -- is: What to do with this guy? Some who are close to the general refer to this question, with a slight smile and a cocked eyebrow, as "the Petraeus problem."

*****

Keeping Petraeus on the inside -- in a job that's related to, but not quite of, the military -- is a judicious stroke.

But will anything actually change? Well, we'll have to see. Maybe Panetta is the right man to deal with Iraq and Afghanistan, and particularly to preside of the end of the latter war. And maybe Petraeus will be a fine CIA director.

But these are political moves, first and foremost. Obama puts an ally/confidante at the Pentagon and a possible rival/critic at the CIA. Panetta will do what Obama wants him to do. Petraeus will perhaps be more independent, but he will also be constrained by his position.

Yes, it was a game of musical chairs. And Obama won.