Tenet Rejects Slam Dunk

Kevin Drum:

"Slam Dunk": ....George Tenet says he's pissed off at whoever it was who leaked his "slam dunk" comment to Bob Woodward:

The phrase "slam dunk" didn't refer to whether Saddam Hussein actually had WMDs, says Tenet; the CIA thought he did. He says he was talking about what information could be used to make that case when he uttered those words. "We can put a better case together for a public case. That's what I meant," explains Tenet.

....He says he doesn't know who leaked it but says there were only a handful of people in the room.

"It's the most despicable thing that ever happened to me," Tenet says. "You don't do this. You don't throw somebody overboard just because it's a deflection. Is that honorable? It's not honorable to me."

Well....color me unconvinced. Given a couple of years to think it over, that's probably the kind of story I'd come up with too, but I think I'd try to make it more believable. Frankly, the table-pounding declaration that something is a "slam dunk" doesn't really sound like the kind of thing you'd say if you were merely agreeing that your PowerPoint presentation could use some sprucing up, does it?

But who knows. Maybe that really is the way Tenet talks. As for his belated discovery that the Bush White House doesn't always behave in honorable ways, all I can say is: I hope Tenet's take on foreign leaders was more insightful than his take on his own boss. The fact that loyalty is a one-way street with Bush the Younger is not exactly the news of the century.

This is the part of the story that I noticed:

Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq, by Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, NY Times: George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

The ... book ... is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

But we knew that.

Comments

[maria]

I haven't read the book, but it is reported that while he savages Cheney he gives Bush a pass. That alone would make it worthless. The guy would appear to understand less as an insider than many of the outsiders.

[kthomas]

maria or anne, you'll love this quote from Tenet's 60Min interview:

He continued: "Now, how it happened and who orchestrated it and what happened — you know, at the end of the day, the only thing you have is trust and honor in this world. That's all you have. All you have is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor. When you don't have that anymore, well, you know, there you go. Trust was broken."

Useless anectdote? Dribble?

To coin a phrase, We Report, You Decide.

LOL

This hurts, really.

[maria]

Free floating truths that need to be attached to somebody or something. He is too chicken to do that.

[kthomas]

Dribble, like a I thought.

Everyday, seems more people looking for a wayout or a scapegoat.

Troops are not going to keep dying for this BS. Sooner or later, they will rebel against the Admin and the Chiefs.

...total meltdown occuring while Bush admin in total denial. Something wicked will happen soon.

[real person from the real world]

I read the NY Times online this morn. While he claimed he believed Sadam had WMD, he said the admin was looking for a change to the middle east, to bring "democracy." I always figured it was all lies, and that the main purpose was to create a "tipping point." And now, as more and more comes out, that is what is looks like. This whole society is becoming more and enthralled with managing every aspect to achieve what they consider *universally desireable goals*, so the admin thought they could manage a change. Unfortunately, there is often some overlooked aspect. We cannot expect to stuff our ideas of democracy down everyone's throats, and when you get rid of a dictator, you don't always get improvements.... Yugoslavia fell apart, now Iraq is destabilizing the whole region, including Lebanon that was just stating to recover from a long civil war.

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/opinion/28dowd.html

April 28, 2007

More Like an Air Ball
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Poor Slam Dunk.

Not since Madame Butterfly has anyone been so cruelly misunderstood and misused. Slam Dunk says that when he pantingly told the president that fetching information on Saddam's W.M.D. would be a cinch, he did not mean let's go to war.

No matter how eager Slam Dunk was to tell W. what he wanted to hear while polishing the president's shoes, the intelligence they craved did not exist. "Let me say it again: C.I.A. found absolutely no linkage between Saddam and 9/11," the ex-Head Spook writes in his new book, self-effacingly titled "At the Center of the Storm." Besides, Junior and Darth had already decided to go to war to show the Arabs their moxie.

The president and vice president wanted Slam Dunk to help them dramatize the phony case. Everyone had to pitch in! That Saturday session in December 2002 in the Oval Office was "essentially a marketing meeting," Slam Dunk writes, just for "sharpening the arguments."

Hey, I feel better.

Slam Dunk always presented himself as the ultimate guy's guy, a cigar-chomping spymaster who swapped jokes with the president. But now he shows us his tender side, a sniveling C.I.A. chief bullied by "remote" Condi.

He says Condi panicked in October 2002 and made him call a Times reporter, Alison Mitchell, who covered the Congressional debate about invading Iraq. In essence, he hypocritically told Alison to disregard the conclusions of his own agency, which had said that the links between Saddam and terrorist groups were tenuous, and that Saddam would take the extreme step of joining with Islamic fanatics only if he thought the U.S. was about to attack him. His nose growing as long as his cigar, he said nothing in the C.I.A. report contradicted the president's case for war.

"In retrospect," Slam writes, "I shouldn't have talked to the New York Times reporter at Condi's request. By making public comments in the middle of a contentious political debate, I gave the impression that I was becoming a partisan player." ...

[anne]

Who are these people, and how awful beyond awful are they? These are the people who deceived and fear-mongered our way to war and occupation and continue still. I really should do a number on State Department officials calling for his or her favorite adult fantasies to help think clearly, but what the heck.

[maria]

For the record:

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/04/26/
sniveling-media-exposed/

Bill Moyers at his best.

[maria]

Yeah and Dick Durbin, Democrat senator, says he knew it was all lies but because he was on the Intelligence Committee at the time he couldn't tell the truth publicly. Hey, that's a good out. Almost as good as Slam Dunk's. LOL.

[maria]

Here's a funny I just ran onto surfing the net:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Archive/Article/0,4273,4473313,00.html

Shawcross? I'll have to look him up. Haven't heard from him recently. LOL.

[maria]

Well virulent warmonger Shawcross was still at it in late 2005.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/
la-op-shawcross9oct09,0,2522992.story?coll=
la-news-comment-opinions

Maybe he is McCain's foreign "policy" adviser now? And I don't think he was/is a Neocon either.

[maria]

And here is a funny to make your weekend. Warmonger Shawcross to whose opinions I have linked used to be a Board Member of the International Crisis Group, said to be dedicated to "working to prevent conflict worldwide." He is no longer listed on the board. Question: did they finally figure out they had a warmonger in their midst, and give him the boot, or what? Anybody know?

[maria]

More on Tenet:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/
washington/28tenet.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I especially like the guy who says Bush "wrestled" with the question of going to war. I suspect he "wrestled" with that like he wrestled with whether to have another drink when he was younger. LOL.

[maria]

Please alert me when the Democrats force her to testify:

Rice will not comply with House subpoena
By Klaus Marre
April 29, 2007
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made it clear Sunday that she does not plan to comply with a subpoena that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee authorized this week.

I'll be waiting. LOL.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/books/28kaku.html?ex=1335412800&en=87c52b70b1681b98&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

April 28, 2007

An Ex-C.I.A. Chief on Iraq and the Slam Dunk That Wasn't
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Since the publication of Bob Woodward's 2004 book, "Plan of Attack," George J. Tenet, former director of central intelligence, has become best known for two words: "slam dunk" — that is, for reportedly telling President Bush that intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was "a slam dunk case!" Those words have been quoted countless times, most notably by Vice President Dick Cheney, who, during a "Meet the Press" appearance last year, suggested that the administration had "made a choice" to go to war based on the "slam dunk" intelligence provided by the C.I.A. — intelligence that later turned out to be wrong.

In his much-anticipated and intermittently fascinating new memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," Mr. Tenet writes that the whole "slam dunk" scene described in Mr. Woodward's book took his words out of context and "had been fed deliberately to Woodward" by someone in the White House eager to shift blame from the White House to the C.I.A. for what turned out to be a failed rationale for the Iraq war. In short, he says, he and the agency were set up as "fall guys," and he was made to look like a fool — rising up, throwing his arms in the air and saying those two words, as if he were "Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah Winfrey's couch."

In fact, Mr. Tenet says he doubts that W.M.D.'s were the principal cause of the United States' decision to go to war in Iraq in the first place, that it was just "the public face that was put on it." The real reason, he suggests, stemmed from "the administration's largely unarticulated view that the democratic transformation of the Middle East through regime change in Iraq would be worth the price."

Mr. Tenet notes that his "slam dunk" remarks came "10 months after the president saw the first workable war plan for Iraq," and "two weeks after the Pentagon had issued the first military deployment order sending U.S. troops to the region." He points out that many senior Bush administration officials, including Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith, were focused on Iraq long before 9/11, and that Mr. Cheney asked Bill Clinton's then-departing secretary of defense, William Cohen, before the 2001 inauguration to give the incoming president a comprehensive briefing on Iraq and detail possible future actions.

On the day after 9/11, he adds, he ran into Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative and the head of the Defense Policy Board, coming out of the White House. He says Mr. Perle turned to him and said: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility." This, despite the fact, Mr. Tenet writes, that "the intelligence then and now" showed "no evidence of Iraqi complicity" in the 9/11 attacks.

Alternately withholding and aggrieved, earnest and disingenuous, "At the Center of the Storm" is interesting less for any stunning new revelations than for fleshing out a portrait of the Bush White House already sketched by reporters and former administration members. Mr. Tenet depicts an administration riven by factional fighting between the State and Defense Departments, hard-liners and more pragmatic realists, an administration given to out-of-channels policymaking, and ad hoc, improvisatory decision-making.

"There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat," he writes of a war that has already resulted in more than 3,300 American military deaths, at least 60,000 Iraqi civilian deaths and already cost more than $420 billion. Nor, he adds, was there "a significant discussion regarding enhanced containment or the costs and benefits of such an approach versus full-out planning for overt and covert regime change." ...

[anne]

Notice the following deceptively low figures for Iraqi civilian deaths and material cost used by the reviewer, "...he writes of a war that has already resulted in more than 3,300 American military deaths, at least 60,000 Iraqi civilian deaths and already cost more than $420 billion."

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/opinion/29sun1.html?ex=1335499200&en=d43e475c1595ce20&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

April 29, 2007

Still Waiting for Answers

Surely no one beyond a handful of the most self-deluded Republicans in Congress was surprised at the disclosure by George Tenet, the former intelligence director, that there was never a serious debate in the Bush administration about whether Iraq actually posed a threat to the United States.

It has long been evident that President Bush decided to invade Iraq first, and constructed his ramshackle case for the war after the fact. So why, after all this time, are Americans still in the dark about the details of that campaign?

For that matter, why don't Americans know the full truth about Mr. Bush's illegal domestic spying program or his decisions on how to handle prisoners of the war on terror? And now there are new questions begging for answers — about the purge of United States attorneys and about campaign pep rallies in executive branch agencies that might well have violated federal law.

For six years, the Republican majority in Congress ignored the administration's power grabs, misdeeds and incompetence or, worse, pushed through laws that gave legislative cover to some of Mr. Bush's most outrageous abuses of power. Now that the Democrats control Congress, they have opened the doors of government in welcome ways. But the list of questions just seems to grow.

We hope Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, enforces the subpoena of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss prewar claims about Saddam Hussein's long-gone weapons programs. Ms. Rice, who was national security adviser before the war, says she has answered every possible question. Actually, we don't have room for all our questions.

Just a few: Did she vet the briefing Mr. Bush got from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's rogue intelligence shop on Iraq's alleged efforts to acquire uranium? The Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department thought, correctly, that the report was false. So why did Ms. Rice permit the president to repeat it to the world? Or did Mr. Bush also know what he was claiming was wrong?

The same applies to other claims about Iraq, including a false report about the purchase of aluminum tubes for bomb building, talk of mushroom clouds and fairy tales about links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. When it became clear the intelligence was false, why didn't Ms. Rice make sure the public found out? ...

[anne]

Mark Thoma wondered at the supposed relative support of the occupation of Iraq among the young. Several people I know, have similarly wondered. Notice then a response:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/opinion/l29youth.html

Young Voters and Bush

To the Editor:

"Those Young People, They're So Unpredictable":

I am 18 years old, and I find some of the results of your poll of young Americans troubling. Nevertheless, I can think of a possible reason why many young people approve of the president and the Iraq war.

No young American wants to believe that his or her leader and role model would fabricate an entire war for political gain and then invoke it to further policies that not only fail to address reality but also repress people who are different, or who just disagree with him.

How can this be true?

The answer is that we are in denial. It is very difficult to face the fact that the people responsible for our nation's welfare have made wrong decisions on our behalf. Our generation has yet to confront the fact that George W. Bush has been a terrible father to our nation.

Now we need to become real men and women and stand up to him.

Ben Smail
Madison, Wis., April 22, 2007

[maria]

Of interest:

http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=10893

[maria]

Democratic "sell out" according to this:

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=10894

[maria]

Don't kid yourselves. We'll still be in Iraq when the 2008 elections roll around. Democrats will not have gotten us out. No way. As Ritter says, it's just smoke and mirrors. And a stately minuet of politics.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0430/p01s01-uspo.html?page=3

And they'll pay a price for that.

[maria]

Juan Cole on Tenet:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/
feature/2007/04/30/tenet_book/index_np.html

Nice!

[maria]

Hitchens on Tenet:

http://www.slate.com/id/2165269/nav/tap1/

Hitchens should know something about being a loser. LOL

[Robby Daniel]

Re: Comment-from Real-person from Real-World-2!

Correct! To-really attempt 2-fix this you-must-first 'FULLY-PUBLICISE' the "CIA-BLACK-OP" started 17-months before the-war which-had 200+ Agents sent-into IRAQ with a budget of-around $500.000.000 with specific instructions to-foster intercommunal SUNNI-verses-SHIA strife supposedly to weaken the BATHISTS! It's-cost 2000+ 'GI's' their-lives! You MUST fully-publicise-this!

Then! Withdraw to barracks & only-ever come-out at-the specific-request of-the designated Iraqi-Army or Police Commanders if-they 'SPECIFICALLY-REQUEST BACKUP!'

Third! Pass a law making-it a 'CAPITAL-OFFENCE' for-any Iraqi-Military or Police who-commits any type-of 'EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLING' for-any reason & ENFORCE-IT!

Fourth! Somehow you-yanks have-to 'TAKE-BACK YOUR DEMOCRACY' from those-men whom-the 'WW2-FINANCIERS' have-used through-blackmail to-steal-it from-you! You 'MUST' get in-control of your-democracy again!

Please?

Robby Daniel