Tenet: Iraq targeted before 9/11

[babsbunny]

http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/wire.ssf?/base/news/1177748703243960.xml&coll=2

Intelligence manipulated to support war on Saddam, former CIA director says in soon-to-be-released book Saturday, April 28, 2007The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - White House and Pentagon officials, and particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, were determined to attack Iraq from the first days of the Bush administration, long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and repeatedly stretched available intelligence to build support for the war, according to a new book by former CIA director George J. Tenet.

Although Tenet does not question the threat Saddam Hussein posed or the sincerity of administration beliefs, he recounts numerous efforts by aides to Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to insert "crap" into public justifications for the war. Tenet also describes an ongoing fear within the intelligence community of the administration's willingness to "mischaracterize complex intelligence information."

"There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraq threat," Tenet writes in "At the Center of the Storm," to be published Monday by HarperCollins. The debate "was not about imminence but about acting before Saddam did."

[Vogon_Glory]

1. Dubya's First Treasury Sec'y Said Same Thing

Dubya's first Secretary of the Treasury also said much the same thing--that Dubya and Cheney were spoiling for a war with Iraq.

These points ought to be remembered and repeated, at least when dealing with those of the electorate who can be reasoned with. Guys like Tenet and O'Neil (and Clarke, for that matter) are not wild-eyed, partisan "ultra-liberal" card-carrying Democrats. They were pretty conservative--Clarke had worked for Bush-the-Father before he worked for Clinton and then Georgiekins, O'Neil was a Texas corporate honcho, and Tenet and Bill Clinton did not get along at all. To repeat the facts is not "librul make-believe," but reporting the facts.

Of course there's a danger when discussing this with right-wingers. After Dubya is out the door, many right-wingers will be saying that the wreckage left by the outgoing no. 43 administration was merely the personal fault of Dead-Eye Dick and Georgiekins, and that a "real conservative" would do better. They shouldn't be allowed that escape route.

But that's a topic for another day and one that Paul Krugman has already touched on.

[Honeycombe8]

2. Tenet is just parroting what O'Neil and Clarke have said before.

He's a little late, and a dollar short.

If he'd have written his book a couple of years ago, when it could've made a difference, like O'Neil and Clarke did, Tenet's reputation might have been saved. But as it is, this late-in-coming book, which solely serves the purpose of trying to clear his name, is nothing more than a CYA book, now that the verdict is clearly in on this war and those who were involved in starting it.

Tenet is a coward. That's what his epitaph should read.