The New Yorker magazine released excerpts from an interview with Obama’s CIA director Leon Panetta. In the upcoming June 22nd issue, Panetta says, “I think he [former Vice President Dick Cheney] smells some blood in the water on the national security issue,” Panetta said, referring to Cheney’s recent critical remarks at the American Enterprise Institute regarding Obama’s impending closure of Gitmo and the suspension of harsh interrogation methods for captured high-level terrorists, i.e., waterboarding.
“It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point,” Panetta told the New Yorker.
Panetta’s words are an oblique admission that Obama has painted himself, his administration and the nation into a dangerous corner. In an effort to please effete Euro-weenies, the Arab Street and his softheaded supporters on the American Left, Obama’s strategy to hand “the war on terror” over to the Justice Department and the courts, leaves America vulnerable to terrorist attacks. As Obama’s first crisis with Somali pirates clearly demonstrated, U.S. military snipers make far better prosecutors than Justice Department lawyers. Implicit in Panetta’s words is the very real fear that Cheney will be right – so the CIA director attacks the messenger. It’s like yelling at the smoke detector for alerting you to a fire.
As a Clinton Administration retread, Panetta had a front row seat to Clinton anti-terrorism policy, which treated Osama bin Laden as a criminal suspect.
In an address before the Long Island Association in 2002, President Clinton said: “At the time, 1996, he [Osama bin Laden] had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.” Since President Obama holds the same pre-9/11 views as Clinton, Panetta has reason to worry.
It’s the height of pettiness for Panetta to suggest that the motive behind Cheney’s warnings is merely to crow if the nation is attacked once again. That the CIA director seems more preoccupied with Dick Cheney’s remarks than foiling al-Qaida plots is proof that, where Islamic terror is concerned, Panetta fears that Obama is just as clueless as Bill Clinton.
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