`Slam Dunk' offers more of an air ball

[CatWoman]

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 WMD 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: CIA 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 CIA chief bullied by "remote" Condi.

He says Condi panicked in October 2002 and made him call a New York 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 United States was about to attack him. His nose growing as long as his cigar, he said that nothing in the CIA 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."

Can't a guy be a lickspittle without being an ideologue?

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_5783346?nclick_check=1

[acmavm]

1. Gave the f**king impression he was a team player???? Who

does this bastard think he's kidding? If there is such an thing as justice, then when the bush**, cheney, feith, & company are on trial at the Hague, he'll be right there with 'em.