To me he came across as a friggin’ whiner.
He swam with the sharks and bitches that he got bit. Worse, he kept his mouth shut about the real intelligence and let Bush lie us into the Iraq war.
I think he’s a smug little twit. He kept trying to say that the US doesn’t torture while admitting that waterboarding is used. Suppose he volunteers for a demonstration to show us how innocent it is? The famous State of the Union address? Didn’t read it, delegated it, someone else’s fault. He could have blown the whistle while the war was still popular and I’d have some respect for his integrity. Now it’s too late for his excuses and finger pointing.
In a letter to Tenet, 6 CIA Officers express their opinion of him. It’s very quite low.
I think his case on 60 Minutes was a slam-dunk.
Regards,
Shodan
Didn’t see it. I have a friend who’s worked for the CIA since 1988 and has had some dealings with several of the DCIs. He’s a pretty objective observer of the Company. I’ll ask him what he thinks about the current Tenet controversy, and report back.
I really hope you do report back. And if you haven’t already, please read the account at the CNN link.
Ooh, burn.
Hey, that was taken totally out of context!! Not fair!!!
I didn’t see the interview, but from what I’ve read in the papers the guy is not going to get any sympathy. If had a shred of decency, he’d return his Presidential Medal of Freedom (or whatever it was that he got) and lead the rest of his life in quiet obscurity.
I think he got a $4 million advance on his book, so on his behalf, maybe he was justified in keeping his mouth shut about the crappy intelligence for so long. After all, this is a Capitalist society. :rolleyes:
If the $4 mil figure is true, that’s about $1,000 (and then some) per American life lost in the Iraq war. How proud he must be.
His attempt to explain away the slam dunk, in my opinion failed. His claim was that it was a slam dunk to justify the war with the intelligence ,but not that the WMD was a slam dunk. Neither were factual.
He was upset with the outing of Plame. That seemed real.
Former CIA agent Michael “Imperial Hubris” Scheuer rips Tenet a new one.
Tenet got busted by Billy Kristol for saying that Richard Perle was talking to him about making war with Iraq the day after 9/11. Point of fact, Perle was in France and couldn’t get back to America because of air traffic embargo. Tenet is currenly backpedaling.
(See how non-partisan? Fair and balanced? Here I am defending one of the vilest cocksuckers on God’s green Earth, even though he’s a Bushivik!..)
Oh, wait, there’s this…
from http://thinkprogress.org/
(Warning! Lefty site! Tighty Rightys advised: Shields Up! Hazardous fact warning!)
He met daily with President Bush but did not warn him that an attack from Middle Eastern terrorists was imminent because that’s not the way we do things. (paraphrased)
That just blew me away.
He also struck me as being rather adolescent in his presentation. Very unnerving. At one time it was as if he were almost demanding that the reporter-interviewer look at his unblinking eyes. That was the impression. He was in the process of lying about how we don’t torture people. At that particular moment, he came across as being about as reliable and cool as Bill O’Reilly.
I had tuned in assuming that I would like the guy and that he was going to bust everybody’s butt. He did that for two or three people, but he was such a clown himself that that was all I could think about.
I wonder if this guy still lives with his mother.
No. She changed her name, and moved away.
It seems that Mr. Tenet wants us all to believe his best defense is that he’s kinda stupid.
Better not give it back to Bush.
But you are correct - Tenet is done. He isn’t going to get any support from Republicans, and Democrats can’t say much about him without deflecting blame from Bush, which they can’t afford. Plus this whole silly “I didn’t say that Saddam’s WMD was a slam dunk; I just meant that the case for Saddam’s WMD was a slam-dunk” is too much like what “the meaning of the word is, is”.
Tenet must have fallen into bad company earlier in his career.
Give Bush credit, he doesn’t seem to be trying to shift blame onto Tenet for the Iraqi war.
Regards,
Shodan
Seeing how Bush still believes it to be a glorious victory, I’m sure he feels there is no blame to shift. If anyone would be able to shift blame, it’s Bush.
Now, you just hold on right there! GeeDubya does not believe that the current conditions in Iraq constitute a major strategeric victory for the US! Nosir! He believes that the current conditions in Iraq will constitute a strategeric victory for the US! Just not quite yet. But soon. Pretty soon. Forseeable future. Someday.
Bush very clearly held up Tenet’s shoddy NIE as the major sales document for the war. When it turned out that there were no WMD to be found, the administration was very quick to blame faulty intelligence.
“We acted on the best intelligence we had.”
“Everyone thought Saddam had WMD.”
Bush has most definitely tried to push some blame onto Tenet.
He started out OK, claiming that the stuff Bush claims his department said and backed were not in fact things it said and backed.
Then he claimed we don’t engage in torture. When questioned directly about waterboarding, he claimed he didn’t really know everything we do. Then he claimed we do what’s necessary.
So he knows we don’t torture, but he doesn’t know everything, he just knows whatever we do isn’t torture, and whatever it is we have to do it anyway…
Then all the real mistakes his department made that resulted in multiple mass slaughters were, you know, just shit that happens when people get real busy at the office. Sure, people are dead, but now you’re just trying to use that to give lazy bureaucrats a bad name!