Panetta.
Directors of Central Intelligence are not supposed to engage in political diatribes…much less speculate about the patriotism of a former high ranking official in the opposite party—but Leon Panetta obviously couldn’t say no to the cheap exhortations within his party calling on him to misuse his position. Panetta’s insult is unworthy of a high official. Not since Sir Oswald Mosley said that Winston Churchill longed for an attack on Britain by the Nazis in order to prove Churchill right has such a wildly irresponsible charge been leveled. (More of that later).
Panetta told “The New Yorker” magazine that former Vice President Dick Cheney “smells blood in the water” on the issue of national security—which is a kind of indictment of the Obama administration in itself. Smelling blood in the water is a statement that in itself justifies scrutiny. Blood in the water presages there is bleeding…and there certainly is on a host of national security issues—notably Guantanamo where Obama made a campaign promise without thinking and now is being hoisted by his own petard…on cutting the funds for missile defense and going soft on interrogations of suspected terrorists.
The key sentence by Panetta added was this: “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. I think that’s dangerous politics.”
That’s an outrage coming from someone who himself is sworn to protect national security—because it’s akin to calling Cheney a traitor. Joe McCarthy’s allegations against the Truman administration were strong but at no time did he express the view that a high-ranking leader of the administration wished for disaster to strike the United States. It’s a sign of the times that had a Republican made this statement about a leader of the Obama administration, the outrage would sweep the country and be replayed echo-chamber-like on all the news media outlets available to the Obama-ites.
There is only one time where a similar statement being made in the political arena. It was made by Sir Oswald Mosley [1896-1980], a British ex-member of parliament who represented Harrow (1918-1923] and Smetwich (1926-1931], Mosley was an aristocratic pro-Nazi, who founded the British Union of Fascists (BUF). assailed Winston Churchill who between 1933 and 1939 warned about the danger of militant Nazi Germany. Mosley said that Churchill desired an attack on Britain by Germany in order to expunge his record concerning the Dardanelles miscalculation in World War I—and that he passionately desired an attack to escalate his political career and get even with his enemies.
Mosley’s charge discredited him because Mosley had been seen as calling Churchill the equivalent of a traitor. Mosley in fact was the near-traitor since he negotiated with the Germans to get their approval of a radio broadcasting franchise in Britain so he could broadcast their propaganda. When the war finally came in 1939, Mosley was interned within his country because he was seen to be a danger to Britain’s security.
The grave mistake that Leon Panetta has made in accusing Cheney of this is clear: Panetta is leading terrorists to believe that our guard is down and that the one official who warns against them is dismissed as an over-ambitious fool who has no concern for his country. Ergo: Panetta’s foolish statement can be seen as aiding the forces of terrorism by insulting and ridiculing a formerly high-ranking American leader who has called for more stringent steps to ward off attack.
It is significant that even Vice President Joe Biden who is known for putting his foot in his mouth, refused to agree with Panetta’s suspicions of Cheney’s motivation.
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