By being a budget director?
He is deep CIA, is my guess. A civilian could not hope to heal the wounds inflicted by Rumsfeld/Cheney. This an internal CIA matter. And Obama is not a stupid man. Panetta is not a civilian.
I've posted my other reasons in my DU Journal. All guesses, to be sure. But good ones, I think.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Peace%20Patriot It doesn't surprise me at all that, "...in the past 24 hours, a number of well respected former CIA officials and officers have also come out to praise the decision...". I expected it. This was a very, very smart pick. Someone so deep nobody even knew.
I don't care much for the CIA, nor for most of Obama's appointments. But if we are going to have a secret organization, supposedly to keep us safe, I'd rather have one headed by a 'white hat' CIA (some loyalty to the rule of law) than by a Bushwhack (treasonous, conscienceless scofflaw). Panetta has said that torture is wrong, illegal and counter-productive. That is the issue around which all else has swirled, in the war between Rumsfeld/Cheney & their rogue operatives, and the professional CIA which sees its job as preventing wars, not manufacturing them. I think Panetta is of this latter school, and it's good that he's now in charge.
Doesn't mean we're not going to continue to be ruled by war profiteers and global corporate predators. But at least some limits will be placed on our government's service to them. If we want liberation from all this, we will start by ridding ourselves of 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY voting systems, with the code owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls.
Until then, expect large secret budgets--for good or for ill--humongous military budgets for threats that do not exist, and big, unaccountable bailouts for the super-rich, and smaller, minor helps for the poor. Also, expect the return of the bad guys, and installation of
their choice of emperors, in 2012.