USA Man (or Person) of the Month

My nomination for USA Man of the Month is CIA Director Leon Panetta. Nominally a politician, he rose above politics and donned the cap of mission commander in an military operation that normally would have seen the CIA sitting on the sidelines (after having provided their intelligence input). Certainly in the past administration, the OBL takedown would have been run out of the Pentagon.

During after-action commentary, he demonstrated refreshing candor that was mission-specific, while staying away from the expected political spinning. Along with the Navy Seals who were on the ground, he deserves great credit in my estimation.

The CIA has been much-maligned, but this task showed it's potential, when capably directed. We have a critical need for CIA competence.

Bravo, Leon Panetta.

I think Panetta did a great job. I think your nomination is a good one. I think your back-handed slaps at the "past administration" are juvenile.

Backhanded? I view my complaints/slaps as rather straightforward.

To be clearer, with a couple of examples:

1. The initial news conferences on the Iraq War had Paul Wolfowitz telling the world all about "shock and awe". This demonstrated unbelievable arrogance, and at the same time betrayed neocon attitudes (overconfidence and myopia). While I was aghast, no Democrat or Republican complained.

2. The incredibly premature installation of a civilian, Paul Bremer, when history dictated a MILITARY governor to put in place. How could that happen? Why would it? If you can answer that question HONESTLY, you will not like the reasons you come up with. At any rate while I was floored, no Democrat or Republican complained. They were clueless.

So yes I fully believed that the neocons would have screwed this up. In a sense they may have had already done so (Tora Bora), though that remains for analysis.

When the history of this period is written, I (obviously) think that the record will reflect my thoughts on some of the issues pretty accurately.

If we are around at the future time, you may call that written history juvenile also.

My vote goes to the guys that put it on the line.

http://www.specialforces.net/Seal_Team_6/team-6.jpg

Several sites have posted copies of this story so I apologize if one of them has been posted here already. It does support the notion that Panetta and even Clinton deserve serious credit.

http://patdollard.com/2011/05/obama-...ama-bin-laden/

Thanks for the article pm. None of that suprises me. Hillary would have made a much better president. Gotta give it to those who went over Obama's head.