George Tenet

[kaylasdad99]

@gonzomax

Not exactly. He caved to the administration to provide coroberation for the WMD claims ,even though he had access to information to that contradicted it. He was told that the evidence was not true by many inside the agency. But he let his ambition win over facts . He could have stopped the war. Instead he sat in back of Powell at the UN giving a song and dance his tacit approval.

As to whether he could have stopped the war, I think that’s still open for debate. In my view, the folks at the PNAC had achieved the White House, and they were going to have their war, whatever anyone said or did.

[Boyo_Jim]

@kaylasdad99

As to whether he could have stopped the war, I think that’s still open for debate. In my view, the folks at the PNAC had achieved the White House, and they were going to have their war, whatever anyone said or did.

I agree with that. But it doesn’t relieve his individual responsibility to either speak out or resign.

[kaylasdad99]

Well, he had to wait until he got his Medal of Freedom, didn’t he?

:rolleyes:

[Boyo_Jim]

Condoleezza Rice disputes Tenet.

I’m hoping this is streaming somewhere, because the article makes her seem even stupider than I thought:

She also said the question about the imminence of the threat was not “if somebody is going to strike tomorrow.”

“It’s whether you believe you’re in a stronger position today to deal with the threat, or whether you’re going to be in a stronger position tomorrow,” she said. “And it was the president’s assessment that the situation in Iraq was getting worse.”

im·mi·nent (m-nnt) KEY

ADJECTIVE:

About to occur; impending: in imminent danger.

Fuck you Condi.

[elucidator]

"On CNN’s Late Edition, Condoleezza Rice responded, “We all thought that the intelligence case was strong,” adding that even “the U.N weapons inspectors [thought] Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” She concluded, “So there’s no blame here of anyone.”

(available at http://thinkprogress.org/, with viewable video clip)

It continues with direct and categorical refutations from the mouths of UN inspectors.

Lying sack. Kinda hot, but still a lying sack.

[Ass_For_A_Hat]

@gonzomax

Not exactly. He caved to the administration to provide coroberation for the WMD claims ,even though he had access to information to that contradicted it. He was told that the evidence was not true by many inside the agency. But he let his ambition win over facts . He could have stopped the war. Instead he sat in back of Powell at the UN giving a song and dance his tacit approval.

I agree. Though I don’t see much difference between what the two of us said.

[elucidator]

Upon reflection, it occurs to me: what kind of drooling idiot of a talking head doesn’t already know that the inspectors said no such thing? Who was such a flaming tool that he doesn’t even question the aforementioned lying sack?

Wolf Blizer. “I’ll take Shit-Witted 'tards for $400, Alex”

[Ass_For_A_Hat]

@kaylasdad99

As to whether he could have stopped the war, I think that’s still open for debate.

He could have gone a long way to at least significantly postponing the war. As CIA director, it was his responsibility that the NIE truly be reflective of what we knew about Iraq. He allowed it to become a sales brochure. A proper, complete NIE would itself have taken much longer than the one we got. A proper, complete NIE would also not have been a convincing argument for war and wouldn’t have fueled Colin Powell’s dubious UN presentation.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

Six former CIA officers lace into Tenet:

In a letter written Saturday to former CIA Director George Tenet, six former CIA officers described their former boss as “the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community,” and called his book “an admission of failed leadership.”

The writers said Tenet has “a moral obligation” to return the Medal of Freedom he received from President Bush.

They also called on him to give more than half the royalties he gets from book, “At the Center of the Storm,” to U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq and families of the dead.

[snip]

The letter, signed by Phil Giraldi, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, Jim Marcinkowski, Vince Cannistraro and David MacMichael, said Tenet should have resigned in protest rather than take part in the administration’s buildup to the war.

[snip]

"You showed a lack of leadership and courage in January of 2003 as the Bush administration pushed and cajoled analysts and managers to let them make the bogus claim that Iraq was on the verge of getting its hands on uranium.

“You signed off on Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations. And, at his insistence, you sat behind him and visibly squandered CIA’s most precious asset - credibility.”

The letter described Tenet as “one of the bullies.”

"You helped set the bar very low for reporting that supported favored White House positions, while raising the bar astronomically high when it came to raw intelligence that did not support the case for war being hawked by the president and vice president.

“It now turns out that you were the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community – a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy shielded by a genial personality.”

I suspect Tenet will very much regret having opened this particular can of radioactive worms.

[Boyo_Jim]

Here is a transcript of Tenet’s 60 Minutes appearance tonight. There are brief video clips of the interview as well, but the video is not yet posted in its entirety.

[Mighty_Girl]

“…the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community”

Them’s fightin’ words :eek:

[elucidator]

He can be such a little bitch, sometimes!

[Count_Blucher]

@Blalron

You could have tried then to talk some sense into George W. Bush

He could have tried to talk sense to a stone wall too.

(And that’s only Half as dense.)

[Little_Nemo]

It may have been mental damage from the events of 9/11, rather than ambition that turned Tenet into a yes man. There was a lot of that going around at the time.

The events were discussing here happened a year and a half after the 9/11 attack. Tenet should have recovered his mental equilibrium by that point.

[Quiddity_Glomfuster]

Tenet is on the Situation Room. Wolf really gave him the gears - asked why, if he knew Saddam was not an imminent threat, did he not make that case to Dubya. Tenet weaseled all over to squirm out of that one but it translated to ‘I didn’t want to rock the boat’ IMHO. Wolf asked if he would give back his Medal of Freedom or give some of the profits of his book to vets. No, of course, to both.

Now he’s being asked about torture. And again he’s excusing it by saying that ‘the program’ they used ‘saved lives’.

I think he thought he would vindicate himself with this book and these interviews. Twit.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar

[Blalron]

@kaylasdad99

As to whether he could have stopped the war, I think that’s still open for debate. In my view, the folks at the PNAC had achieved the White House, and they were going to have their war, whatever anyone said or did.

Bush is an extremely stubborn man, no doubt. But you must remember that he was up for re-election in 2004. Imagine if George Tenet resigned in protest, and spoke about the cherry picked intelligence and the dubious nature of the reports, Bush’s refusal to listen to anything that didn’t support an Iraq invasion, etc. It would have been absolutely devastating to Bush’s “sale” of the war to the public. As much as Bush had a hard on for invading Iraq, he probably had a bigger hard on for getting re-elected and might have backed down. Even if he didn’t back down, he’d still get his ass handed to him in November '04 and our troops would be returning home a lot sooner.

[OttoDaFe]

@Blalron

Bush is an extremely stubborn man, no doubt. But you must remember that he was up for re-election in 2004. Imagine if George Tenet resigned in protest, and spoke about the cherry picked intelligence and the dubious nature of the reports, Bush’s refusal to listen to anything that didn’t support an Iraq invasion, etc. It would have been absolutely devastating to Bush’s “sale” of the war to the public. As much as Bush had a hard on for invading Iraq, he probably had a bigger hard on for getting re-elected and might have backed down. Even if he didn’t back down, he’d still get his ass handed to him in November '04 and our troops would be returning home a lot sooner.

No, I rather imagine the response would have gone something like, “Well, just goes to show you. We tried to be nice to one of Bill Jefferson (‘BJ’, get it?) Clinton’s cronies, and look how he repaid us! Proves that you can’t trust a member of the Democrat Party!”

And the Great Unwashed would have gobbled it up like a starving Rottweiler presented with a pork chop. And the march toward Glorious War would have continued with nary a pause.