In other news, President-elect Barack Obama has reportedly picked President Clinton’s former chief of staff Leon Panetta to serve as the next director of the CIA. Panetta is a former California congressman who served on the Iraq Study Group. The selection has surprised many in Washington, because Panetta has little experience on intelligence matters. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the new chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, criticized Obama’s pick. 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.” Leon Panetta has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s torture policies. He wrote last year, “Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don’t. There is no middle ground. We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances.”