Josh Marshall (TPM): Tenet walks the plank

[Dudley_DUright]

And off the plank he goes. CNN is running breaking news that CIA Director George Tenet is taking "responsibility for incorrect information in State of the Union address about alleged Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa."

This may not be good public policy or accountability. But I will say this: it'll make for a great absurdist novel. (And since I'm casting around for a book idea I'm taking serious note. Where's Joseph Heller when you need him?)

Here's the deal, one which will be fairly familiar to anyone who has been reporting on this story for the last eighteen months. Broadly speaking, the internal battles which have gone on in the executive branch over Iraq have pitted the career intelligence bureaucracy against more ideological types -- often political appointees. There's been a lot of overlap between that division and one between the CIA and State Department on the one hand and the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice President on the other, with the CIA and State having a much more skeptical take on the WMD/terrorism case against Iraq and the OVP and Pentagon having a much more maximal one.

The maximalists pushed like crazy to get this Niger-uranium charge and other dubious charges into the president's speech and into the argument for war generally. Now, we hear that it's the CIA's fault for not having insisted strenuously enough that the White House not retail bogus information to the American people.

more...

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/july0302.html#071103702pm

[Martin Eden]

1. Josh Marshall provides keen insights

I thought his closing paragraph summed it up nicely:

“But all of this begs the obvious and singularly important question: the charge is that CIA didn't push hard enough to keep bogus information out of the president's speech. Who was pushing on the other side? Who was pushing to keep the bogus information in? And why?”

In case any of you missed it, his PRACTICE TO DECEIVE column is a superb primer on the neocon agenda for remaking the middle east:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html

[Fovea]

2. Indeed

I never realised that the CIA had the responsibility for fact checking and approving the SOTU address... Where was that in the constitution again?