I guess I can quit boycotting CNN. Candy Crowley and the gang are on my side now!

:D

I applaud the reporter that you slammed today. He asked the obvious and highly relevant question. Given your choices for your leadership team, what would make your supporters (us) believe that anything is likely to change. Your rhetoric is great but does not appear to be supported by your actions, at least so far.

You buckled to political pressure on FISA and amnesty.

You are in the process of walking back your commitment to bring our forces home in 16 months.

You are appointing politicians who do not support your agenda to offices of high power and visibility. Some of them have a very heavy load of anti progressive baggage. They include Gates who is responsible for mismanagement and anti humanitarian trends in the military.

You are responsible for Joe Lieberman being confirmed as chair of the most important committee of the Senate for investigating the Executive branch, even in the face of his overwhelming incompetence and lickspittle performance under the last administration.

To balance all of this, we have only your assurance that you personally will be running the government. While I personally admire your intent, I am beginning to question your judgment. Pray God that my doubts are unfounded, but you must continue to earn trust rather than to take it for granted.

25 November 2008

Dear President-Elect Barack Obama:

I am honored to have been involved in leading your Transition Team for the Intelligence Community, and I am deeply committed to ensuring that your Administration is well prepared to deal with the many challenges facing our Nation. My transition responsibilities have led to speculation that I am under consideration for a senior intelligence position in your Administration. Quite unfortunately, this speculation has led to strong criticism in some quarters prompted by my previous service with the Central Intelligence Agency.

It has been immaterial to the critics that I have been a strong opponent of many of the policies of the Bush Administration such as the preemptive war in Iraq and coercive interrogation tactics, to include waterboarding. The fact that I was not involved in the decisionmaking process for any of these controversial policies and actions has been ignored. Indeed, my criticism of these policies within government circles was the reason why I was twice considered for more senior-level positions in the current Administration only to be rebuffed by the White House.

I am extremely proud of my 25 year record of intelligence work, and I am prouder still of the courageous and heroic work performed by the women and men of the CIA over the past 60 years. The Nation owes its CIA officers a tremendous debt of gratitude for the sacrifices they have made for their country, and they deserve strong and steady leadership in the years ahead.

Therefore, it is with profound regret that I respectfully ask that my name be withdrawn from consideration for a position within the Intelligence Community. The challenges ahead of our Nation are too daunting, and the role of the CIA too critical, for there to be any distraction from the vital work that lays ahead.

(signed) John O. Brennan

And, I happen to agree with you, too.

I thought if Obama was just barely stopped from choosing Bremmer to head up CIA, well, that is the apocalypse right now. Thank God it was only Brennan…

My magical thinking had Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary. But so far, I see Hagel forgotten, Richardson all but forgotten, a bone tossed to Thomas Daschle, Crash McNasty honored within the first week or two as a “valuable, necessary component,” Lieberman triumphantly raised up on the shoulders of the Senate Dems, and Sec. of Stare offered to the (coy) last person anyone had bet on.

It’s been a hard fall from November 5 to now. We’ve been through 8 years of horror, but President-elect Obama isn’t thinking about us right now. He’s forgotten that we aren’t an ordinary electorate, but a bruised and bristling, battered and tortured lot (like Tweak on Southpark x-infinity). Oh well, it’s all going to take hard work! And the biggest part of that is swallowing yet more nasty surprises, lots and lots of ‘em, as we hobble along on our crutches into yet another age of resounding face-slaps, here on the Island of Like it or Lump it, in the middle of the Sea of the Unexplained.

We have us a new Decider!

Yeah, I remember now, Brennan (Medal of Freedom?) isn’t Bremmer (Blackwater facilitator, royalty, worse-than-Saddam), but he’s bad enough. It’s apocalyptic that Brennan was considered. A-P-O-C-A-L-Y-P-T-I-C.

I have a son in the military–one tour in Iraq, next tour coming up 2009. I convinced him not to vote for McCain, that was the best I could do with a young man exposed to so many lies, so insulated from his country. I convinced another son (a Hillary supporter) to lighten up, get out there and vote Obama for the sake of his brother. I convinced a third son (an Obama supporter from the get-go) to work on his friends in Missouri every day, and, busy though he is, he knocked himself out.

I’m visiting my military son next month, and I’ve decided I’m trough trying to convince him of Obama’s rightness and greatness. I haven’t got enough leg left to stand on. Besides, Obama doesn’t need me anymore. I’m going to admit to my son that he was right: they are all alike.

Because honey, they are.

Love,
Carly
Still living with Lieberman’s filthy campaign lies,
A lone ex-repug in the Ozarks…
ECHO ECHO.

Bob in HI

In the case of Gates, there is the added benefit potentially of helping to placate the right about a military withdrawal. The last one was done by a gooper and poisoned politics for forty years or so.

There’s still something unsettling about keeping a Bush guy for defense- but I suppose we’ll get over it.