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Speaking about choices. Did you read about how the Obama Administration knew about the location of Osama Bin Laden for three years and how the President was conflicted on what to do?

Looks like the good choices President Obama made was to hire Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta. A bad choice was Valerie Jarrett.

And, release the Bin Laden photos already. Talk about delayed decisions – sheesh…..

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The Day By Day Archive

Please Eric do it.

Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama’s domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. “I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president’s agenda,” he says. “But that can’t be a part of my decision.”

And, then, President Obama can declassify a whole bunch of CIA and NSA materials that may shed some light on the entire 9/11 enhanced interrrogation technique’s flap. Of course, this may endanger American national security but Eric Holder, the Attorney General who encouraged President Clinton to pardon Marc Rich, a known criminal, knows best.

Now will it be suprising that after this piece in Newsweek that Obama or Rahm calls Holder in for a little chat?

I say put Leon Panetta, Dick Cheney, Porter Goss and George Tenent on the stand under oath and let the chips fall where they may.

But, it won’t happen.

A good catch of the nuance of Steny Hoyer defending Nancy Pelosi on CIA enhanced interrrogation techniques, including waterboarding by Jim Geraghty of National Review.

In an effort to help out Nancy Pelosi, the number two Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer, asserts that CIA Director Leon Panetta doesn’t know what he’s talking about: “As I understand, Mr. Panetta’s notes don’t reflect that. Mr. Panetta was not there and he wasn’t the director. I haven’t seen the notes.”

Hoyer has now effectively doubled down on Pelosi’s claim, arguing that Panetta is lying when he wrote, “our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.”

Read the entire piece in which Hoyer asserts: “I believe the Speaker.” Yet…………

Political Cartoon by Michael Ramirez

Guess POTUS – Elect did not consult with two senior Democrat Senators on the Senate intelligence Committee before he appointed “OUTSIDER” former Bill Clinton Budget Director and California Democrat Congressman, Leon Panetta as the Direcotr of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta has extensive government experience but virtually none in the intelligence community.

Both Senators Feinstein and Rockefeller were nonplussed and may oppose Panetta’s confirmation.

• Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who this week begins her tenure as the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said today that she was not consulted on the choice and indicated she might oppose it.
• “I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director,” Feinstein said. “My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”

• A senior aide to Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), outgoing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the senator “would have concerns” about a Panetta nomination.
• Rockefeller “thinks very highly of Panetta,” the aide said. “But he’s puzzled by the selection. He has concerns because he has always believed that the director of CIA needs to be someone with significant operational intelligence experience, and someone outside the political realm.”

Panetta would report to the Director of National Intelligence, Retired Admiral Dennis Blair who is also an Obama nominee and also faces confirmation by the Senate.

In the meantime, if the President-elect does NOT afford senior California Senator Dianne Feinstein the respect that she feels she is earned, Di Fi may very well return the favor by leaving the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairmanship to run for California Governor in 2010. Her term in the Senate expires in 2012.

Look for increasing crticism of this Obama nomination and its eventual withdrawal. The wrong man for the wrong job here.