The Political Conundrum!

It’s a curious thing about elections: they have consequences. Still, Washington’s favorite parlor game (for those who have parlors) at the moment is the peculiar effort to divine which Bush appointees will be sticking around in Barack Obama’s first term. The slogan was “Change We Need,” folks, not “Bush Act III.” Of course, with Rahm Emanuel and John Podesta as the President-Elect’s sherpas, you could argue this is really, “Star Wars: Return of the Clintonistas.”

So maybe SECDEF Bob Gates will stick around to run the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for a year. He’s universally regarded as a decent human being and a breath of fresh air after Don Rumsfeld. (Plus, Gates likes to sit down, whereas Rummy liked to “stand 8-10 hours a day,” as he famously wrote on a torture memo about “stress positions” at Gitmo.)

But what about the Director of National Intelligence, retired Navy Adm. Mike McConnell, who’s been on the job for less than two years?

Sources within his office, which oversees 16 U.S. intel agencies, say he’s “willing” to stay for a little while to provide Obama a transitional security blanket. But Team Obama has not called to discuss his future, those same sources told the New York Daily News' Mouth of the Potomac Blog this week. And you can bet McConnell’s job security wasn’t a topic when he briefed Obama in Chicago last Thursday on foreign threats.

Much speculation centers on John Brennan, a highly respected retired CIA official who stood up the National Counterterrorism Center in 2004 and is advising the President-Elect. Among many things Democrats like about the softspoken Brennan are his anti-torture views.

“Best guess for DNI, right now, is Brennan,” one graybeard in the intelligence community told me today. “Despite rumors to the contrary, I don’t think McConnell really wants to stay.”

Then there’s retired Air Force Gen. Mike Hayden, the CIA director, who has restored morale to the spy agency after Porter Goss made spooks so miserable they were forced to leak like the Bismark. Hayden told Pittsburgh radio station WDVE on Monday that he’s never met Obama, but said “I’d be honored if the President-elect would ask me” to stay at CIA. The spymaster also complimented the Illinois senator as “very well read, very smart.”

“[Hayden] doesn’t have any expectations one way or the other,” another senior intelligence official said. “Hayden likes the work, he has a high regard for the people there, and he cares deeply about the mission. Those are the factors that he would consider [if asked to stay].”

Many Democrats are cool on Hayden, however, since he was director of the National Security Agency after 9/11 when it began warrantless surveillance of many U.S. phone calls. Hayden also defended CIA destroying interrogation videos, though loyalists griped that the abusive sessions were all authorized by his predecessor, Clinton holdover George Tenet.

In a brilliantly-timed speech before the Atlantic Council today, the politically-astute Hayden took a sharp turn away from President Bush’s well-worn talking points on fighting terrorism and essentially endorsed Obama’s campaign position that the “central front” is in the Afghan-Pakistan tribal belt.

“Today, the flow of money, weapons, and foreign fighters into Iraq is greatly diminished, and Al Qaeda senior leaders no longer point to it as the central battlefield,” Hayden declared.

Only two months ago, Bush told the National Defense University in a speech: “Al Qaeda leaders have repeatedly declared that Iraq is the central front of their war with America.”

“We will know the national security lineup by December 15,” the first intelligence source predicted.

NOTE: Late Thursday, Congressional Quarterly reporters Keith Perine and Tim Starks reported their interview with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s likely incoming chairman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said of Hayden and McConnell, “My view is that it’s time for a new start.”

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have prompted both the Army and Marine Corps to begin a program to seed infantry squads with "designated marksmen" The need to equip these new marksmen with accurized rifles prompted the Army to reconsider the role of the venerable M-14 rifle.

The U.S. military says a civilian cargo aircraft has crashed south of Fallujah, a city in western Iraq.

A former Navy woman has been indicted on federal charges of stealing night-vision goggles, radios, aviation helmets and other items from Norfolk Naval Station and then selling them on eBay.

The Pentagon tossed Lockheed Martin a $50 million lifeline for the F-22 Raptor fighter jet Wednesday but left the next administration a plan that calls for ending F-22 purchases to speed production of the F-35 joint strike fighter.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said he's got a short list of people he'd like to see replace Barack Obama in the Senate, and he acknowledged Illinois Veterans Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth is among the mix.

The Treasury Department's decision to designate the Union of Good for funding Hamas is welcome and overdue.

What is interesting, however, as noted by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report (free registration required) is that the designation does not directly touch Yousef al-Qaradawi, the head of the organization and the leading theologian for the Muslim Brotherhood. Here is his website where he is listed with the Union of Good president.

The reasons for the OFAC designation is stated as:

The leadership of Hamas created the Union of Good in late-2000, shortly after the start of the second Intifada, in order to facilitate the transfer of funds to Hamas. The Union of Good acts as a broker for Hamas by facilitating financial transfers between a web of charitable organizations-including several organizations previously designated under E.O. 13224 for providing support to Hamas-and Hamas-controlled organizations in the West Bank and Gaza. The primary purpose of this activity is to strengthen Hamas' political and military position in the West Bank and Gaza, including by: (i) diverting charitable donations to support Hamas members and the families of terrorist operatives; and (ii) dispensing social welfare and other charitable services on behalf of Hamas.

The designation describes some of the the relationship between some members of the Union and Hamas: My full blog is here.

CJ has posted the post milblog conference wrap-up. You can watch this wrap-up below. In it you will see JP Borda from milblogging.com, Toby Nunn from TobyNunn.com, myself, Marcus and CJ both from soldiersperspective.us.

MilBlog Conference Wrap-up from Nathan Long on Vimeo.

The NEFA Foundation has obtained a new statement from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban) addressed to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama. The Taliban assess that "the overwhelming victory of Barrack Obama, the candidate of the Democrats in the US Presidential Election and his assumption of US presidency reveals the collective willingness of American people not to continue the current despicable and anti-human wars in Afghanistan and Iraq --- wars that have been launched by W. Bush." Further, it is "imperative for Obama to put an end to all the policies being followed by his Opposition Party, the Republicans and pull out US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq forthwith." The statement ends with the following advice to Obama: "He should respect the rights of the people to independence and observe the norms of human rights. In short, he should set out on a policy that will have a message of peace for the war-stricken world which has been victimized by the arrogance and tyranny of USA."

FEMA and the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding launched the second phase of a major Web site initiative on government transparency, showing what federal funding has been spent or set aside for the recovery of schools, hospitals, fire and police stations and other efforts.