Leon Panetta is a POS
Since the day that Leon Panetta was nominated for the position of Secretary of Defense, this blog has had few kind words for him. Now that he’s saying the things that we want to hear, I see no need to change that policy. If you haven’t been paying attention, The National Journal outlines some of the things that Panetta wrote in his book and that he’s saying on his book tour. But we said in the beginning that Panetta was nominated by this administration for his job for his political acumen not because he brought any war-fighting skills to the office.
I’ll remind you that every f’n weekend while he was in office, Panetta flew his staff to his home in California at taxpayer expense ($33,000/pop) while the troops he commanded spent months, if not years away from their families. While he was making those trips to the West Coast, he was planning to cut his subordinates’ healthcare and pay. He was a politician, not a leader.
The National Journal titled their article “Why Obama Won’t Listen to Leon Panetta”. That’s easy, he wasn’t hired to be an adviser – he was hired to be a rubber stamp. Yeah, I know, he’s being tough on the president these days in interviews with O’Reilly and everyone else. So what? How is that courageous? Courage would have been resigning while this administration was destroying the Defense establishment of the United States instead of sniping from the sidelines years later.
By the way, Panetta is a Clinton supporter – he’s always been a Clinton-supporter and his job these days is to clear the decks for Hillary’s run at the White House – to distance her from this failed administration.
But remember, Panetta’s job at Defense was to screw the troops and to find Defense money to pay for the social programs at the expense of our National Security. Now, that job has fallen to Hagel.
Panetta is Washington and Washington is Panetta – everything that is wrong with both.
Category: Shitbags
+1
Thanks for pointing out the Clinton connection – it had not occurred to me that he was looking for a new job. I suspect that is the answer to the time-honored question, “okay, why now?”
There is a lot of cynicism and sarcasm on this blog but within it, there is a lot of good thinking. Keep it up.
In case anyone doesn’t remember, Panetta was Clinton’s White House Chief of Staff 7/94-1/97.
Let me guess, this POS has a book coming out and he needs some juicy tidbits leading up to the release of said book. These fuckers have no honor, no souls and no conscience.
He’s on his book tour now.
My shocked look is permanently in place….
Thanks MGySgtRet,
Does anyone know where I can get a hat, tee-shirt, coffee cup, etc with a cartoon of an old (“mature?”) guy with his chin on the ground and a shocked look on his face saying, “What do you mean the President lied?!”
or something …
Is there a market here ?
I suspect that contemporary photos of many of us could be used as a model for said bling – except our faces would be showing sarcasm and not surprise.
Folks, I rather doubt Panetta is angling for a job in the next Administration. In Jan 2017, he’ll be 79 1/2 years old.
IMO he’s doing this for his reputation and standing in history. He sees the writing on the wall.
Maybe not in terms of a job, but he would benefit from another Dem administration in other ways-he would have greater “access” than in a Pubbie government and his ability to grant favors would be greatly enhanced. I don’t doubt that he is thinking of his reputation, but he has a lot of reasons to favor the pantsuit over her opposition.
My take is that he wants to retire and enjoy whatever time he has left, and is now worried by how he’ll be seen by history if Iraq now goes to sh!t due to this Administration’s abject incompetence. But I’d guess there’s an outside chance you could be correct.
Why not multiple reasons? He makes a few million off his book to fatten his retirement; he cleans up his own questionable record for posterity; all while getting Hillary off the hook for all her foreign policy screw-ups by blaming them all on Obama, thus ensuring himself of having ongoing influence at the presidential level. Such influence could surely get him some lucrative board seats with defense contractors providing very fat paychecks for very little work.
The Clintons, though they are disloyal shitheels, are exceeding shrewd at politics and at securing loyalty from others. Panetta is doing this out of loyalty to Bill-ary. Maybe they’ll set some friends/family of his up nice if Hillary wins, who knows.
Yes, he’s making Obama look bad in order to prop up Hillary.
I don’t see him getting a permanent job, but if Hillary makes it to the white house, I imagine him getting a “Consulting” Job with them part time to pad his retirement even further, get some free travel to DC, etc.
Lastly, I don’t know why she’s in the running, Hillary already had her two terms as President in the 90s…
Jonn…Thank you. Panetta is a bag of dicks and always has been and worse, like Obama, he’s always been a coward and traitor to his troops and his nation. “Courage would have been resigning while this administration was destroying the Defense establishment of the United States instead of sniping from the sidelines years later.” Well said Jonn. It’s easy to have Monday morning courage from inside the wire, after the battle is over. I despise him because he never spoke any of the ills he accuses Obama of now, when he was in the position of SoD and had the power and audience to make a difference. At least some disagreements, before Obama would have canned him. So Panetta can simply kiss my big ass on both cheeks. I’ll show him where since he never has found his own with both hands and a mirror. Obama found it for him though and bent him over the Oval Office desk after every briefing, before Biden but after Kerry, just to show them which dog was on top. He spent his entire time like a useless hunting dog who hears a gun shot, rolls over and pisses on his belly. A “heel dog” we called them and they were soon given away as pets since they proved worthless for their bred calling. Those puppy self pissers are the kind of advisers Obama has around him. Problem is, when shit gets thick and real, like it is now in the world, those puppy pissers only know to roll over and piss on their belly in fear. They have no, intelligent or worthwhile advice to offer the President. Well Obama, you get what you pay and ask for. You wanted controllable mouth pieces, not national leaders in each area of expertise. So when the world comes to the crisis arenas we see now, you are devoid of information. The intelligence community, which had proven you a LIAR by letting it be known they advised you LONG ago about ISIS and Iraq and you squashed that for your own personal and political reasons. Now the… Read more »
Holy fuck…I think I love you.
Great “shit” (pun intended)
Wow, Sparks! Outstanding! I wonder if OBAMA and TOTAL DISGUST WITH THE ASSHOLE register at NSA.
And anyone here thinking that Cankles wouldn’t fuck over the troops just as quickly and twice as hard as Obumbles, raise your hand.
Leon is a proxy for Hillary. If he is saying anything, its to make her more “politically viable for the future” (Bill’s letter to draft board)
Panetta has carried water for the Clintons for YEARS. Fucking Gunga Din!
But, in the end, Panetta was no hero, unlike (Use best Kerry voice) Gun-ja Din.
No hero you say? As if staring down that Taliban assasin on the runway at KAF never happened (or was it BAF? Cambodia maybe?)
Did you know that John Kerry served in Vietnam ???
I just wanted to remind everyone…
…and didn’t Kerry (who served in Vietnam) write himself up for his medals, and then pretend to throw them over the WH fence as an anti war protest?
I often wonder when I see these cynical old political war horses rewriting their own history if they are unaware of the permanence of their words on the internet these days.
Panetta recently said this, We had leverage. We could, for instance, have threatened to withdraw reconstruction aid to Iraq if al-Maliki would not support some sort of continued U.S. military presence. My fear, as I voiced to the President and others, was that if the country split apart or slid back into the violence that we’d seen in the years immediately following the U.S. invasion, it could become a new haven for terrorists to plot attacks against the U.S. Iraq’s stability was not only in Iraq’s interest but also in ours.
But in 2011 at the hearing on the withdrawals while he was the rubber stamp dickhead Jonn so eloquently skewers above he said this, It was very clear, among all the attorneys here, that we absolutely had to have their approval through their parliament if we were going to have a SOFA that provided the kind of immunities we needed. I cannot tell you how many times we made that clear. I believe the Prime Minister understood that, and it was at the point where he basically said I cannot deliver it, I cannot get it through the parliament that we were then left with the decisions that were made.
So which is it Mr. Panetta? Were you lying to Congress or are you lying now? Or more probably are you lying in both instances?
History will remember him as Clinton’s lying chief of staff, as Obama’s lying secretary, and as a lying author with a jaded, cynical view of the American people as serfs living to please their masters. Sadly that last view is probably the most honest thought that he and others of his ilk possess these days.
No cheating!
In 2011, Panetta was nominated by the Golfer in Mom Jeans to become Defense Secretary. In the weeks leading up to his Senate confirmation vote, many wondered whether he had the right sort of experience needed for the job. Nevertheless, he was confirmed in June 2011. The Senate vote was:
A. 71-29
B. 90-10
C. 100-0
D. 84-16
C
because he is the consummate Washington insider?
Congratulations. You win something. I don’t know what but you win it. Yes, he was the poster boy for Beltway Insider. Fresh from his two-year hitch in the Army, he became a Congressional staffer, then a Critter himself for multiple terms, a WH confidant, a bureaucrat running Personnel, CIA chief, and Sec of Defense. he had names, dates, probably 8 X 10 photos, you name it. He was so deep inside, other insiders needed directions to find him.
Cool. I did not cheat even. Just made an educated guess. Everybody loves a humble immigrant walnut farmer. But not me.
Panetta is mostly ‘testing the waters’ as far as messaging goes. His comments are going to be used on the campaign trail, no matter who runs. They’ll refer back to ‘the distinguished former SecDef’ and his assessments, and use those comments as ‘how we’ll go forward’.
It’s all about the posturing and the talking points and messaging…
The answer to the question I posed above is C. That’s right. Not so much as a single senator voted nay, resulting in the rather rare full-Senate unanimous vote of 100-0. What rubber stamp? Where? I don’t see a rubber stamp.
“Doin’ the job here, boss!”
“Do the job, Luke.”
He violated USC by IDing the ground force commander of op Neptune Spear, by name, in the presence of individuals not cleared for that information (hollyweird types). A complaint from NSW was made.
At the same ceremony he also discussed classified topics in the presence of persons who were not cleared for that information.
IG investigated, but investigators were told to hold off on any reports – until after Panetta had retired.
I will say this: regardless of what you think of Panetta, he was WORLDS – UNIVERSES – above the dimwitted retard we have at DOD right now. I’m not kidding you. Having spoken to briefers who dealt with both, apparently Hagel is a drooling ignoramus. He commands no respect at DOD or anywhere else. Those who brief him say he doesn’t understand a simple pie chart – as a matter of fact they’re not allowed to brief him with pie charts, because he doesn’t get them. He’s dumber than a box of hammers, and I’m being generous here. Panetta may be a reprehensible political animal, but he was also very smart, and there are certain things he did while he was in that office that I very much appreciated from a DOD perspective (I’ll leave it at that).
I’m no Panetta admirer by any stretch, but compared to the shit show that’s over there now, he was positively stellar.
Steve McCroskey aka Chuck Hagel stumbled so badly in his confirmation hearing…Republicans & Dems had a look of shock on their faces. GOP didn’t want to waste political capital blocking his confirmation…so there ya go.
You think Biden is scary as POTUS? SECDEF Hagel is considered the deputy CinC, and holds the other launch code key….frightening.
We have a Secretary of Defense? Really? Who knew!
“It has been said that politics is the world’s second oldest profession. I have noticed many times that it bears a striking resemblance to the first!” – Ronald Reagan
Screw this guy.
The sooner we get some real men running this show, this whole world could turn into a much better place.