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Hope everyone had a relaxing weekend. Before we post our upcoming Podcast with Jack Pellicci of Intergraph, we wanted to do a quick roundup of noteworthy news to get the week started. As always, we welcome your thoughts and opinions. Last week were received a number of very cogent comments from many folks surrounding Panetta’s qualifications and Google Latitude. Thank you all for that!

Trouble Brewing in the U.K.
President Obama was recently briefed on the CIA’s new (and vast) spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks being launched from Britain. It is believed that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the US under the visa waiver program is the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on American soil. Here’s the full article.

Winning the War on Terror with “Soft Power”
Col. David Tohn, an Army officer and National Security Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, as well as former GEOINT panelist wrote this very enlightening Op-Ed in the Miami herald about using education and scholarship to promote understanding in the Middle East. It is a story about a young Palestinian man who had the unique opportunity to be a Fulbright scholar as opposed to a jihadist martyr. The premise is that it is better (and we would say more progressive) if we presented young jihadists with opportunities to learn and understand and win the war on terror with “soft power” — which is about winning the war with ideas — there would be less violence in the Middle East.

By bringing back the concept of “soft power” into global affairs, we are ushering in a more progressive — and some would say “ideal” — way of dealing with extremists. While the reality is that global conflict will still continue and violence will still be a part of the equation, this is a step forward in the right direction. What do you all think?

Panetta Disses Cheney at Confirmation Hearing
While we spent much of our time last week debating the qualifications of Leon Panetta as the new head of the C.I.A., we wanted to quickly highlight a few things that happened at (and right after) the hearing. First up, Panetta blatantly dissed Cheney, who tried to whip the nation into a state of fear (probably wanted to relive his power and glory circa 2003) regarding potential terrorist attacks. Here’s what Panetta said about Cheney’s remarks: “I was disappointed by those comments, because the implication is that somehow this country is more vulnerable to attack because the president of the United States wants to abide by the law and the Constitution.”

Also, this is a more of a “below the radar” kind of story, but there was an altercation between Panetta’s handlers and a reporter from CongressDaily. Check out the Politico story here.

Finally, here’s some “man on the street” commentary about Panetta being (or not being) qualified to head the CIA.

Tags: Cheney, CIA, GEOINT, Intergraph, Obama, Panetta, Politico, War on Terror