Former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet came off as a self-centered whiner on 60 Minutes. His interviewer didn't do much better. Tenet is known as the guy who called evidence of Iraqi WMD a "slam dunk." He's mad about this. It's not that he didn't say it, you see, it's that he was taken out of context. Tenet claims that he told the president that he could improve the weak case for Iraqi WMD and make it a "slam dunk" case. Is Tenet's version supposed to make him look any better?

Rather than focus on his own costly errors, he ranted over how "despicable" it was that someone high up leaked the "slam dunk" information. "Men of honor don't do this," he told 60 Minutes. But neither do men of honor volunteer to craft a "slam dunk" case when the evidence doesn't rate it. He admits failing to vet the president's 2003 state of the union address with its infamous sixteen words implying an Iraqi pursuit of uranium from Niger. He admits he got Iraq wrong, but lamely defends: "Intelligence, my business, is not always about the truth." In Tenet's world, intelligence is about "estimates" and "guesses" about "analysis." What about actual boots-on-the-ground intelligence? It doesn't seem to occur to Tenet that his eschewal of eyes-on intelligence in favor of "analysis" is the main reason for American intelligence's blunder in bombing a Sudanese aspirin factory, failure to avert 9/11, and promotion of WMD falsehoods in Iraq. All this happened on Tenet's watch. The emotional Tenet dubs the speculation that Bush's Medal of Freedom award to him muted his criticism the "most outrageous thing I have ever heard." He's certainly not mute now.

Tenet's most interesting remarks involved his revelation that the Iraq hawks began drumming up war against Saddam Hussein on 9/12. Tenet recalled bumping into Richard Perle on the day after 9/11 at the White House, where the then Defense Department adviser launched into a diatribe about making Iraq pay for 9/11. "What the hell is he talking about?," Tenet thought. An appropriate reaction, but, with Tenet running U.S. intelligence when it made it's most significant mistake in its history, his holier-than-thou criticism of his former comrades leads me to ask the same question about him.

Supposedly Pearl was in France on 9/12 and was not back in the states until the 15th.

"What about actual boots-on-the-ground intellegence?" I think this has been a problem for a long time. The US lacks good human intellegence. This must be improved.

The bottom line is the debacle in Iraq has likely all but ended the United States as a major world power. For this, I expect Republicans to be held accountable. As the US continues to lose its status as a major world power, this will result in a major lifestyle adjustment downward for the average American. Republicans will lose even more ground in the 2008 elections.

The only way for the Republicans to salvage their position will be to support the immediate redeployment of American troops to the American homeland. Those troops can be used for border security. Any way this is looked at, Ameirca's position as a major world power is likely over for the forseeable future.

All of the focus on "terrorism" has caused the US to lose sight of Russia and China. Russia and China are the biggest threats to American national security. Russia and China pose a far greater threat to the US than "terrorism" does. Unfortuantely the American failure in Iraq means that Russia and China will now be the most powerful nations on Earth. American national security has become even more difficult.

Unless the Republicans push for immediate withdrawl from Iraq their electoral prospects for 2008 will be very ugly. Of course their electoral prospects should be ugly any way.

If that's true Mike, then Tenet has some explaining to do.

Tennet is well know for his poor performance as head of the CIA. Allowing it to decline into the equivalent of an academic institution it was on a par with State's INR in terms of probing insightful anaylsis that could be relied on and trusted or to put it another way about as good as Madame Betty's tea leaves.

The outrageous behavior of the dhimmiecarts and their repeat of their Vietnam performance will probably lead to their collapse in 2008 as a party of real strength. Just as 1972 demonstrated the American people didn't support their crazy and traitorous beliefs one can only hope the Dhimmies continue to advocate a cut and run strategy that features such patriots as Billary, Murtha, and Kerry.

I’m not a wild supporter of GW but I’m really getting sick of the leftists with their ‘Bush lied, people died’ slogan shtick. Clinton holdover George Tenet was one whose opinion was valued by the President and his administration and which was part of the reason that we were led to believe the WMD stories and consequently went to Iraq. Now this sleaze is hawking a book and tries to disavow his blatant complicity. What’s been mildly entertaining is watching the reaction to the fallout by the hand wringing left who have selective memory regarding Clinton’s belief that there were WMD’s and that a military excursion to Iraq might be necessary.

wmds was the reason for the war but not the only one. u.n. resolutions are worthless. Bush thought the iraqi people were civil enough for freedom. wrong, maybe 40% but the rest are animals. i support the war but GW has lost me. i guess i am more hawkish than he is. he has tried to please too many people, and has ended up pleasing no one. al sader should have been wasted a long time ago. but this clown is still around. o well GW has gotten soft. prob. because of 6 years of beatdowns from the libs. he is broken.

DHIMMIECARTS LOL

This whole post/discussion is ridiculous. What is the point of blaming Tenet? He's obviously not a great guy, but at least he admits that this war is a mistake.

"Clinton holdover George Tenet was one whose opinion was valued by the President and his administration"

Why mention that he is a Clinton appointee when you also say his opinion was valued by the current administration? Is it somehow Clinton's fault Bush valued Tenet's opinion?

The elephant in the room is that while everyone else knows that this war is complete b.s. our fearless leader still thinks it is just and noble.

So how about instead of blowing smoke and stretching to find any Dem you can blame this b.s. war on, you hold accountable those who can actually stop this thing.

r.c.

If you feel Dan does not hold the Republicans accountable, then you very rarely read his posts.

Ben

If your post was directed at me, I agree that Dan does hold Republicans accountable. What I meant was I expect the voters to hold the Republicans accountable. Unless there is a change in Republican strategy, the Republicans will likely lose even more seats in the House and Senate than they have already lost and the Democrats will coast to victory in the Presidential election. In any event, the Republicans with their current policies deserve to lose.

Easy pickings for an opposition party to retrospectively question a difficult decision made by a now unpopular President and continue to think they have proof that he conspired to get us into an unholy conflict. Bush lied? What about those on the disingenuous left? Tenet lying about his role, phonies like Kerry and Clinton reversing their positions on the war. Somehow, they skirt any blame for this mess and it now falls on, essentially, one man who didn’t lie and who believed he was doing the right thing.

Bush was in the process of making some very important strategic and politically tough decisions and needed to draw on the best information he had available to him. Tenet provided an opinion supposedly based on hard data that there was a present danger and was adamant about it. The reality of that threat was one of many reasons for Bush to pull us into a conflict with Iraq. Although Clinton would never have had the balls to do what Bush did, he was likely getting the same feedback from Tenet.

Now, just to sell a few books, Tenet provides more ammunition for the left and proves he’s more of a F.O.B. rather than demonstrate any loyalty to his most current former employer. Just goes to show that Bush was too much of a good old boy, fool, inexperienced, believed in the nobility of man....take your pick, and should have cleaned house in the first place.

I'm sorry, didn't Hussein kill 5000 Kurds in 1988 using chemical weapons? He demonstrated that he was manufacturing such weapons and had the will to use them. Why doesn't anyone ever mention this, or are my facts totally wrong?

Homer,

Actually it is in dispute if Saddam gassed the Kurds in 1988, but even if we concede that he did, it wouldn't establish the fact that he was developing weapons in 2002 and early 2003. The claims of US intelligence were that Iraq had re-started the production of chemical, biological, and possibly nuclear weapons in 2001, but the evidence for these claims had all been debunked before the war began in March of 2003.

The conclusion of the Iraqi Survey Group is that Iraq didn't develop any chemical weapons after 1991, and the known munitions in Iraq's inventory were destroyed in the summer of 1991 under the supervision of Hussein Kamel. That Iraq had chemical weapons in the 1980s is true, but it is not particularly relevant since the argument for war -- the casus belli -- was that Iraq was re-arming with WMD in which to threaten United States. This is false and thus the war in Iraq was about as pointless as a war can be.

Yes Homer, why do people tend to forget that? Guess the Kurds didn't have a strong enough lobby in D.C. so attempted genocide by Saddam doesn't count.

There has been little dispute and much evidence that Saddam had and used chemical compounds as a means for mass destruction against the Kurds. That and lining them up and shooting them in the head to fill mass graves whenever he had the notion.

It appears that there are many among us who would selectively forget that this was a very evil man who took great delight in the extermination of his perceived enemies by any means possible. But, as long as it makes Bush look bad, we will elevate a monster as just being misunderstood.

ASDF,

It find it unusual that this compassion for the Kurds only occurs as an excuse to defend President Bushs' decision to invade Iraq. Why was there not outrage at the time by the leading figures in the conservative movement or Republican Party? Why did they not bring this matter up throughout the Clinton years?

The Kurds are just political hay for the Bush supporters. You portray them as victims only as rationale to support Bush's occupation of Iraq. Other than that, they've never meant anything to the conservative movement or Republicans. But without the WMD fairy tale, I guess a good sob story is all that's left.

I wouldn’t know the Kurds if I tripped over them, never mind necessarily having any feelings of compassion for them. But, related to all of the foolishness regarding the fact that Bush lied about WMD’s, Homer made the point, which has been conveniently forgotten, that Saddam did have WMD’s in the form of lethal chemical agents and used them to mass murder a segment of his own population.

I doubt that Bush had any compassion for the Kurds either but, as demonstrated by Saddam’s attempted extermination of them, it was known that Saddam did have WMD capability. The question was what other potentially more lethal capabilities did he have. And as he had thumbed his nose at the U.N. inspection apparatus so many times with regard to allowing them to do thorough investigations, along with the known fact that there were terror cells using Iraq as a home base, there were grounds to act.

Heard two sound bites made by Hillary RODHAM Clinton yesterday, one from her recent pandering campaign where she blah, blah, blahs that the war has been mishandled and that, essentially, Bush lied. The other was from the Senate floor in 2002 where she says that she's seen the intelligence that shows Saddam has WMDs and that we have reasons and justification to take him out. How quickly, we all, forget. Eh?!!!

So, your point is that you and Hillary have the same opinion but she's just pandering to the left?

It would appear so.