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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 2:03 pm Post subject: Former CIA Director Takes the Offensive against W. Bush... |
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NPR.org, April 27, 2007 � Former CIA chief George Tenet said the Bush administration used him as a scapegoat over intelligence issues with the war in Iraq, and debate among top officials was absent when decisions were made to invade the country.
In an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes to air Sunday night, Tenet discussed claims made in his forthcoming memoir At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, which focuses in part on his dealings with the Bush administration in the weeks and months leading up to the Iraq war.
Tenet, who has rarely been seen in the media since leaving the CIA in June 2004, said his comment on Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction being a "slam dunk" was taken out of context by the administration. The comment, he said, was made in a meeting in late 2002 in reference to the idea that the Bush team needed to make a better case for going to war... |
NPR Reports
Thanks to Igotthisguistar for an earlier ref to this story. |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 7:23 pm Post subject: Re: Former CIA Director Takes the Offensive against W. Bush. |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Quote: |
NPR.org, April 27, 2007 � Former CIA chief George Tenet said the Bush administration used him as a scapegoat over intelligence issues with the war in Iraq, and debate among top officials was absent when decisions were made to invade the country.
In an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes to air Sunday night, Tenet discussed claims made in his forthcoming memoir At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, which focuses in part on his dealings with the Bush administration in the weeks and months leading up to the Iraq war.
Tenet, who has rarely been seen in the media since leaving the CIA in June 2004, said his comment on Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction being a "slam dunk" was taken out of context by the administration. The comment, he said, was made in a meeting in late 2002 in reference to the idea that the Bush team needed to make a better case for going to war... |
NPR Reports
Thanks to Igotthisguistar for an earlier ref to this story. |
I am actually not surprised since I heard before the war that there were contradictory intelligence reports coming out, and it didn't seem the findings were conclusive that Iraq was a major threat. The CIA never stated that Iraq was a threat, that the president should go to war. It was a decision he made, and he made the CIA look bad. I think Tenet should have been more careful in terms of guarding the reputation of the CIA and not using the terms he used even if they were taken out of context.
The statements made by Tenet show Bush wasn't really interested in people coming out with real proof in terms of how much of a threat Iraq was. He simply wanted to go to war and deceived the public. That is the impression you get from Tenet and also various people who quit working for the administration including O'Neill and that security official who came out with a book. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 8:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Adventurer wrote: |
| ...taken out of context. |
Tenet comes to this debate with much integrity and credibility -- as do many others.
"Slam dunk." Always suspicious to me. Woodward deals with corridor conversations, informal gossip, he said, she said, and the like. People tend to take Woodward's sensational stories as if they were raw National Security Council minutes.
"Slam dunk," indeed. But what were the one-hundred or so words spoken before these two? And what were the one-hundred or so words that followed them?
In any case, let us resist the temptation to seize Tenet's story hook, line, and sinker and not forget that he, too, wants to come out of this looking good -- as is perfectly human. And I wish he would have staked out this territory much earlier -- resigning rather than support the war, for example.
That being said, I have an advance-order with Amazon.com for his memoirs and will read them enthusiastically next week. I expect to find confirmation that the Administration politicized the intelligence process from the beginning.
This is an old issue in Washington. |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 11:59 pm Post subject: |
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Adventurer wrote:
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| The CIA never stated that Iraq was a threat, that the president should go to war. |
Oh, really? Tenet admits in his book and a video of his testimony at the time to Congress (aired again today on CNN International) clearly indicated that he believed Saddam had WMD. So too did the world intelligence community.
Of course it is left to the President to determine whether this poses an imminent threat, a judgment that he, of course, made in the positive.
Tenet does not come out swinging at Bush but at Cheney for taking his "slam dunk" remark out of context. That turns out to be a legitimate gripe but doesn't negate the essential point that almost all the players were "complicit" in this decision. So what if Cheney had already decided to invade? Tenet and the CIA did nothing to resist that conclusion other than to inform the VP that no al-Qaeda links with Saddam had been confirmed.
And Tenet admits in the book that the 2002 CIA Threat Assessment was seriously flawed.
So where are you going with this? |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2007 12:51 am Post subject: |
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| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
| So what if Cheney had already decided to invade? |
That pretty much sums up the neo-con perspective. "So what if we broke the law and lied our asses off? Nobody stopped us!"
Interesting that the employee is now supposed to be responsible for stopping the employer...
Same BS, different day. Voigt = honestly deluded. Stevie = dishonestly complicit. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2007 12:52 am Post subject: |
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| Ahhh, that was easy.. All is normal again. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2007 1:15 pm Post subject: |
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Rice responds to Tenet
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QUESTION: CIA Director George Tenet -- former CIA Director George Tenet has a book coming out tomorrow called, At the Center of the Storm. A lot of news in that book. Probably the most startling two sentence of the book go like this. He says, "There was never a serious debate that I know of within the Administration about the imminence of the Iraq threat, nor was there ever a significant discussion regarding enhanced sanctions or the costs and benefits of such an approach versus full-out planning for overt and covert regime change."
Is that true...? |
Six former Agency officials respond to and fault Tenet
| CNN Reports wrote: |
The writers said they agree that Bush administration officials took the nation to war "for flimsy reasons," and that it has proved "ill-advised and wrong-headed."
But, they added, "your lament that you are a victim in a process you helped direct is self-serving, misleading and, as head of the intelligence community, an admission of failed leadership.
"You were not a victim. You were a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war and you share culpability with...[Vice-President Richard] Cheney and George [W.] Bush for the debacle in Iraq..." |
CNN Reports |
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