Michael J. Kelly [Creighton University School of Law]: "From the perspective of the outside world, Gen. Michael Hayden's decision to wear his military uniform makes it appear that the military is taking over the CIA. And from their perspective, about the only thing worse than the CIA after Iraq is the U.S. military. Perspective matters. This administration doesn't take it into account much and the poor foreign policy results are evident. Indeed, that is the underlying reason that the U.S. is so widely viewed as losing the battle for hearts and minds in this protracted war on terror generally and in the Iraq operation particularly.

The stream of poor policy choices by the Bush administration reinforce this conclusion: fencing off our border with Mexico, eavesdroping on our own citizens and throwing some of them into military brigs without access to courts or counsel, indefinite detention of people at secret locations known as black sites, and the continuing torture of foreign detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Cuba. The message seems to be that we no longer respect human rights, that we no longer trust even our own citizens, and that civil liberties are available only when they are convenient at the whim of whatever government is in power. Again, from the perspective of the rest of the world, which viewed America during both World Wars and the Cold War as a beacon of freedom, hope and opportunity and after 9/11 as the victim of an unprovoked attack, America has become that which it most abhors: a security state that is evermore closing itself off from the world and its own people – a self-protecting government. That is the hallmark of a state in distress, closing in on itself.

America is not that state, and never should become so, but that perspective is being fed continuously by this administration, and Gen. Hayden is helping it along even further today."