Get ready, America just got a lot less secure. It’s going to be amature hour at the CIA:

“President-elect Barack Obama has selected Leon E. Panetta, the former congressman and White House chief of staff, to take over the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization that Mr. Obama criticized during the campaign for using interrogation methods he decried as torture, Democratic officials said Monday.

Mr. Panetta has a reputation in Washington as a competent manager with strong background in budget issues, but has little hands-on intelligence experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he will take control of the agency most directly responsible for hunting senior Al Qaeda leaders around the globe, but one that has been buffeted since the Sept. 11 attacks by leadership changes and morale problems.

Given his background, Mr. Panetta is a somewhat unusual choice to lead the C.I.A., an agency that has been unwelcoming to previous directors perceived as outsiders, such as Stansfield M. Turner and John M. Deutch. But his selection points up the difficulty Mr. Obama had in finding a C.I.A. director with no connection to controversial counterterrorism programs of the Bush era.

Aides have said Mr. Obama had originally hoped to select a C.I.A. head with extensive field experience, especially in combating terrorist networks. But his first choice for the job, John O. Brennan, had to withdraw his name amidst criticism over his role in the formation of the C.I.A’s detention and interrogation program after the Sept. 11 attacks.”

Well for that matter why not pick Al Franken, or James Carvell, or even Chris Matthews? Too bad he’ll fly through the surrender-crat senate for confirmation. Hopefully though he get’s ZERO cooperation from the field and he get’s “set up for failure”, so that his term is short. This should tell you all you want to know about how serious Obama takes our national security. But then again he did say that his goal was to disarm us didn’t he?

UPDATE: Via HotAir his only qualification seems to be his stance against interrogation techniques that have saved thousands of lives.

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