More on Feinstein's peeve over Panetta

TPM reports that Pat Roberts (R-KS), of all people, is OK with Panetta, but Bush-enablers Feinstein and Rockefeller (supposedly Democrats) remain rankled if not outright in opposition. Read Elana Schor's piece (follow link in "DIFI SPEAKS" post) for just how arrogant, self-serving and all-around insufferable Dianne Feinstein is. Quote:

«Feinstein seemed to acknowledge the Obama team's desire to find a CIA director who would signal an end to the abusive interrogation tactics of the Bush years. "We all want a break with the past," she told the reporters milling around her in the Senate. "I was the one who went into the conference committee" ...between the House and the Senate last year... "with an amendment that would use the Army Field Manual as the universal standard for detainee interrogations," she added.

«"I understand the administration's desire to cut clean and open a new chapter and I support that. Whether those changes can be made" with Panetta at the helm, she added, "remains to be seen.»

I loved one of the commenters' remark:

«No, it remains to be seen whether those changes can be made with the likes of YOU as Intelligence chair, Senator.

«God, that woman makes me want to hurl.»

Me, too, although I might have put it a bit more delicately.

Or, another commenter:

«Yeah, we are all so impressed that you dug up a copy of the Army Field Manual and did some grandstanding with it....how'd that stunt end up? Oh yeah, it changed NOTHING.»

Frankly, if the Obama team really did snub Dianne Feinstein, I say, good. She very, very richly deserves it and needs to find out that things have changed in Washington.

Fire Blackwater?

TPM reports that a State Dept. panel is recommending dropping Blackwater as the main provider of security for State Dept. personnel in Iraq. The decision will be left to the Obama administration, naturally.

This is an example of too little, too late. It's clear that there has been massive fraud and abuse by private contractors in Iraq, and that the whole scheme of privatizing services that once were, and should again be either handled by uniformed military or by civilian government employees, needs to be completely overhauled. In most cases, private contractors should be excluded entirely. Certainly those whose track records have been deplorable (and that's most of them), should be fired and excluded from eligibility for a good long time.

Of course, in conjunction with a top to bottom overhaul of American interventionist foreign policy all around, which I hope the Obama administration seriously pursues, we can hope that the need for private contractors in these kinds of functions will drop to practically zero in the fairly near future regardless.