Roger L. Simon: A bad day for Georges

Boy George and George Tenet made the Drudge Report Sunday, both in manners I'm sure they hadn't planned on. It's hard to say which story is more appalling, but it's easy to say which is more serious - Tenet's. This is the former DCI we're talking about here. Is he a moron or a liar or both? Any of those three answers is disconcerting but they are the only conclusions you can draw from this:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has now learned of a second, more stunning error in Tenet's book (which is due to appear in bookstores tomorrow). According to Michiko Kakutani's review in Saturday's Times,

Here's the problem: Richard Perle was in France on that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United State until September 15. Did Tenet perhaps merely get the date of this encounter wrong? Well, the quote Tenet ascribes to Perle hinges on the encounter taking place September 12: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday." And Perle in any case categorically denies to THE WEEKLY STANDARD ever having said any such thing to Tenet, while coming out of the White House or anywhere else.

This is something much disturbing than mere forgetfulness on Tenet's part. It is also almost ludicrously poor editing by his publishers HarperCollins. (And they say blogs don't have fact-checkers!) And how embarrassing is a gaffe like this to the CIA themselves, who are supposed to vet all works of former employees.

The best of the three awful choices above, alas, is that Tenet is a liar. Intelligence agents, as even those of us whose knowledge only comes from LeCarré novels know, are sometimes called up to prevaricate. But they are supposed to do it well. Tenet lies like a nitwit, if that's what he was doing.

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In fact, maybe there is truth to the rumor that his super-secret, access code at Langley was his name spelled backwards.

Bush I guess really believed that he could 'reach out' to Clinton's people, and make Washington a better place.... boy was he wrong.

I just read Buckley's column on Iraq (National Review). It is so depressing to see such as he embracing failure. It is so NOT OPTIONAL for the USA to fail and leave Iraq... Not, that is, if the USA wants to continue being a power in this world. And I have yet to see a really good argument that the USA has in fact 'failed.'

I have just finished a study of Waterloo. On the first day of that battle, the Prussians were thoroughly beaten at Ligny, and the Brits only just held their own at Quatre Bras. The next day, both forces retreated, the Prussians to Wavre and the Brits to the ridge in front of Waterloo. The following day, the French were beaten, but only after a very difficult battle, a 'near run thing'. You see, Wellington knew that it is necessary sometimes to CHANGE YOUR TACTICS. This is, in reasonable times, known as 'BEING FLEXIBLE' in the face of reality.

If this is all our civilization can stand, 4 years and 3,000 casualties, and ESPECIALLY being unpopular in Europe - if that is all we can stand, then maybe we deserve to become 'dhimmi.' I wonder what Wellington - and Napolean - would say if they could see us now.

The political sniping over 9/11 goes something like this: Democrats say "It happened when Bush was President". Then the Republicans say "Clinton fiddled around and did nothing for eight years after the first WTC bombing in 1993."

But you know who was here for *both* administrations - George Tenet. So where does he come off criticizing anyone? You've got it exactly right Heather, he should have been canned. I remember decades ago when the head of the CIA was fired over the Bay of Pigs invasion, a much lesser disaster for the US.

Well, googling is of little help in finding out where Perle was on 9/12, but it as to the substance of the charge:

"This could not have been done without help of one or more governments [citing the need for passports, communications, intelligence and training for pilots for yesterday's attacks]. Someone taught these suicide bombers how to fly large airplanes. I don't think that can be done without the assistance of large governments. You don't walk in off the street and learn how to fly a Boeing 767."--Richard N. Perle in the Washington Post, 9/12/2001

People make an issue of Bush keeping this guy on, but the truth is...it is not unusual for people to go from one administration to the next. Once upon a time in a less polarized world it was considered continuity. My exbrother-in-law went to work for the Justice Department right out of college back in the 70's. He is still there and he has watched a lot of administrations come and go.

Of course the Director is a political job and so people expect their to be politics in the decision of who gets the job. That might be how Tenet got the job in the first place. Politics. At any rate, he needs to be quiet right now.

It indeed is not unusual for people to continue in their jobs from one administration to the next. However, it is unusual for a massive intelligence failure to occur and the person directly in charge continue on.

George Tenet should have been fired by Bush on Sept. 12. Bush should also have fired the idiot Mineta.

The fact that Bush did not is a measure of Bush's incompetence in the job. To those Democrats who are always crying out for Bush's impeachment, my response is that incompetence is not an impeachable offense.

Surely, this is what Perle would have said had Tenet run into him on that fateful day.

So there's really no need to fact check here. Just file under "Fake but Accurate".

I think you're jumping the gun a bit. After all, how deeply affected have the great majority of American's been by Islam's war on the West? Not deeply...yet. It will take another 9/11, or worse. Then we will see what America is made of.

another poss: he was a saudi mole (who perhaps unknowingly worked for the bad half of the family) who is now covering himself.

We believe you have a moral obligation to return the Medal of Freedom you received from President George Bush. We also call for you to dedicate a significant percentage of the royalties from your book to the U.S. soldiers and their families who have been killed and wounded in Iraq.

Incompetence seems to have covered this Administration from every angle. I never thought impeachment was an option, but incompetence was why I chose to vote against the Administration in '06. If I'm incompetent at my job, I get fired. I see no reason for the President to be different.

American media [tv/print] does a nice job of turning filet mignon to hash. Let's wait for the book and not focus on a date/time discrepancy.

Tenet spoke about the 9/12 "palpable fear of the unknown" which I politely suggest is one of more accurate observations I've heard and something the American media should recall.

Looking back, I think that the key failure of the Bush Administration is not a single government employee lost their job because of September 11. Not one.

It was a world-class opportunity to reform the culture of the CIA (where "field agents" generally live in Virginia and visit their "area of interest" for a few weeks a year), and get rid of the considerable deadwood, and Bush blew it.

I have often felt that the most efficient government agency is the Post Office. Their task is open to the public, they have to absolutely every day, get their work done. The next best agency would be Amtrak. After that agencies get more opaque, hidden, un measurable. The CIA would have to be at the far spectrum. I know when I was in Special Forces none of the old NCOs trusted them. We, the gun toters, would pay the price, they would write the history. We would do the work, they would take the credit. It was common for teams with agency personnel to have code words and exit plans secret from supposed Agency friends. We even thought the higher ups would toast their own guys.

I know itï¿½s not always true, but one of the things that got me about Tenet was his appearance. Fat, disheveled slob. Common on. And it was not like he was Einstein, but the guy couldnï¿½t even stop stuffing himself, or get his suit cleaned and pressed.

But back to the CIA. Swartzkoph in the GW I said the agency intel was so qualified as to be useless. The Agency had no one in Iraq for decades. Not one stinking person. How stupid is that? But why should they, the money kept rolling in like welfare and Section-8 checks.

Then there was Director Deutch who like to surf Russian porn sites with his agency laptop. Casey with a brain tumor still running the Agency like a drunk Stalin in his last years.

But hey, trust them. Send the money, STFU and leave it to the experts. Right. Sure. Born yesterday.

Mark Bowden does a good job explaining the farcical role of the CIA in Iran in 1979 in his recent book "Guests of the Ayatollah."

Mogwai, since Google isn't helping you with Perle's whereabouts on September 12 (and since the non-response by Tenet to the accusations of "inaccuracy" don't give you a clue), as a personal friend of Perle's, I will tell you what I know. Richard Perle has a home in France where he spends his summers, sometimes a great deal more. He told me BEFORE this book came out that he was at his French home on September 11 and of the, not surprising, difficulties he had getting home to the US after the catastrophe. It took him several days, he said. So obviously he could not have been there on September 12. Helpful?

His opinions in an oped are not relevant to what Tenet alleges in his book. Mentir est honteux, as they say in French.

I, too, am a friend of Richard's and yesterday he reminded me,too, that he was stuck overseas until Sept 15.Pointing to an op ed dated Sept 12 does not validate Tenet's claim--it is different than what Tenet asserts and undermines his thesis that the neo-cons had their sights set on war in Iraq beginnng 9/12.(As to the substance of the Sept 12 op ed I am in total agreement with it. edwardjayepstein has done the best work in deconstructing the CIA's song and dance on this. Read thru his excellent research and you will see the ONLY thing the CIA has to rebut the Czech intel claim that Atta met with Iraqi intel in Prague just before the attack is that SOMEONE used his cell phone in Fla when the meeting occurred. Brilliant refutation that isn't.)

Napolean had many important supporters in England! One lady, a Mrs. Wallace, wife of a GENERAL Wallace, knew that her hero was planning to escape from Elba, and told a friend that she definitely wanted to go to Elba and visit him (Nappy) BEFORE HE DID SO! She got one thing wrong: she thought he was going to go to Italy and become king.

The Napoleanic wars went on a long time, and had a vocal bunch of Nancy Pelosis, who saw Napolean has a very nice fellow with lots of great ideas.

"Looking back, I think that the key failure of the Bush Administration is not a single government employee lost their job because of September 11. Not one."

Except that Republican administrations are not allowed to fire political appointees for any reason other than the MSM demands it. Every firing has a cost. Every single one is poked at from every angle on the off-chance that it will turn into something like the recent AG fiasco.

The key failure was the Bush thought some people were patriots first and politicians second--in contrast to all available evidence.

And voting for Pelosi and company because of incompentence in this administration would seem to be letting one's annoyance get the better of one's logic.

Yes, it does appear that this Presidential Medal of Freedom winner is a liar. According to the link "dclydew" provides above, his great lie took place October 1, 2002, when he submitted a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that ignored intelligence from the previous month contradicting the claims of that latter-day Rasputin, the Prophet Dick Cheney. That September, CIA operatives had interviewed a Hussein relative (and Iraqi defector, doubtlessly with a bounty on his head) who discounted the idea that Iraq had an active WMD program. So either Bush was informed of this, in which case he really has committed an impeachable offense, or else Tenet steadfastly refused to relay the information to him. Instead, he proceeded to tell the President in December that WMD's were a "slam dunk", and he stood behind Colin Powell as he made his career-ending and reputation-destroying UN speech the following February.

The key fact about the alleged Perle incident is its triviality in comparison with the lie about WMD's -- a lie which also appears to be INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIABLE. That is, CIA officials really did gather data that September contradicting WMD claims. Regarding the debate over what Perle said, WHO CARES? Either Tenet heard it on September 12, 2001, or a week later, or he's making it up. In any case, the only people who really care are war supporters trying to change the subject from an examination of how we got into the fiasco we're stuck with today.

Shhhh, don't tell them about the lies they want to be true... just nod and smile about the lies they want to be false. After all, if Tenant was wrong about a conversation with Perle then he must have been wrong about the runup to the war. Or at least, if we stick our heads in the sand and pray, maybe it will be true.

NB: In order to have any intellectual credibility, you will need to show that 1) the administration knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hussein had no WMDs, and 2) claimed otherwise.

Now it seems no matter what bad things happen, the first impulse that some people have is to fire someone.

What difference would it have made? The problems that lead up to that intel failure can be laid at the doortstep of the Congress just as easily as Tenet.

Right now the Democrats are trying to undo the Patriot Act, there has been a strong desire on the part of many to stop the NSA surveillance program as well.

I am not defending Tenet, but the idea that Bush was somehow incompetent because his first reaction was not off with their heads...makes it plain that a lot of people do not realize how entrenched those problems and shortcomings were, and to some extent still are.

And speaking of incompetent, the UN weapons inspectors were saying as late as 1999 that Saddam had not only weapons programs, but was believed to have weapons stockpiles as well. So the people who thought Bush was incompetent to keep Tenet voted for the Democrats who would let the UN have a say in our foreign policy.

If someone was lying to someone, then the UN and the Clinton administration was lying to Bush. BTW, where are the weapons? Did the weapons fairy come and spirit them away? After all, if you have all these facts you should be able to answer that question.

What had been stored in all the empty bunkers they found all over Iraq and what was Saddam hiding for all those years? If he was indeed an innocent man then the blame should be laid at the feet of Bush's predecessors. And why didn't he comply a decade ago and save his vicious regime?

But then again why bother asking..... the way this little game works is that when a Democrat says it, it is okay fine. It is only a horrid and deliberate lie when the man saying it has an R behind his name.

This is what drove me from the Democrats. I am not all that conservative. I just get tired of the self serving sanctimonious partisan political posturing and preening. That is the only consistent thing about the Democrats.

Why would someone in a meeting say "it’s a slam dunk" about FIXING a weak report they were responsible for? If it was a slam dunk why didn't the report being discussed bear it out?

I don't think George can honestly defend himself. If he knew then (as he claims) that WMD's and Al-Queda had been falsified, then he is responsible to the American People for failing them as the head of the CIA. If he was a Bush Yes Man in this instance, then his hands are covered in the blood of the innocent.

Of course, if he's right, the rest of the Administration is bloodguilty as well.

no, Bostonian, I don't need to "prove" that everyone knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hussein had no WMD's. The burden is on those that would invade a sovereign country presenting no imminent danger to us in order to enforce UN resolutions. (Lovely how selective people can be about which UN resolutions need to be enforced.) We don't ask a person to prove that he doesn't deserve to have a search warrant filed against him, rather, we look at the evidence that police present about why he should be searched. And if the evidence doesn't add up, the police don't come in.

In the same regard, the record now shows that CIA officials had data in September 2002 that cast significant doubt on the idea that Hussein had WMD's, or that Hussein had any sort of an operational, working relationship with Al-Qaeda. The record also shows this data was willfully ignored, either by Tenet or by Bush. YOU prove to me these preceding two sentences are false, and I'll change my tune. I'm not saying that we should concluded from this data that Hussein posed no threat, simply that this evidence would have instilled a great measure of caution in a responsible administration, one that wanted to make sure Hussein had no WMD's, rather than an administration looking for a PRETEXT for an invasion.

Markus,
You would have a point if WMD was the only reason to depose Saddam Hussein, which it was not.

The Bush doctrine is that no tyrant is sovereign. This is the reason I voted for him in 2004, voting Republican for the first time in my life. It's about freakin' time, I say!

Obviously you disagree with this central concept. But instead of arguing the basics, you continue to ignore the root argument and go onto your Bush-lied-people-died nonsense. It is quite passive-aggressive.

markus, your definition of "lying" on this topic has been correctly characterized by Terrye. I call blind partisanship on your part.

No, they did not have that evidence. They had no real new evidence one way or the other concerning Saddam and his weapons. None, zip, nada. This is just the Democrats doing what they do best: evading responsibility. The truth is markus, if what you are yammering on about is true, then the Clinton administration should have turned Saddam loose a long time ago. But they did not. I remember Zinni making sure the troops had shots to protect them against anthrax back in 1998 when Clinton ordered the bombing of Iraq. So what you are saying is that Clinton ordered the bombing of a sovereign nation without ample evidence to back up his claims. And even Tenet makes it plain that he believed those weapons were there. So don't pretend you have evidence that you do not have.

I am so tired of listening to outraged incompetent Democrats scream about blood on someone's hands when they ran the damn government for years and were actually in control of the Senate when the Congress passed the authorization to go to war in Iraq back in October 2002. I do not know if you have bothered to read that autorization. It is not long and it might refresh your memory as to just what the debate was about at the time.

Instead we get this self righteous sanctimonious posturing from the Saddam Hussein fan club year after freaking year.

I got it markus, if you had your way there would have been no elections in Iraq and Saddam Hussein, the butcher of Baghdad would still be trying to find ways to exterminate the Kurds. Got it.

Marcus: It has only been since no weapons of mass destruction were found that this has become the sole reason for the war. The actual reasons are stated in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public law 107-243, 116 Stat. 1497-1502) The votes in both House and Senate were bipartisan. And lest we forget, the oil for food scandal was feeding Saddam a lot of money that was going into terrorist organizations and would have been available for weapons programs, or perhaps were being used for weapons programs.

As to Tenet, the organization he left continues to reflect his leadership. The leaks concerning the NSA program and other technologies are certainly from the CIA or other intelligence sources. Doing more harm to the administration than to our country's enemies -- or as I think Fred Thomson said too bad they are better at politics than they are at intelligence.

And markus, if you are saying that the CIA had explicit evidence that Saddam did not have stockpiles of weapons in September and just decided to keep it to themselves knowing they would be left looking like fools a few months later, well I want to hear it. Not some vague worry crap, but concrete evidence. And btw the auhorization also cited that Saddam was not to have weapons programs or chemical agents and both were found. So are you saying that it was ok for Saddam to keep the programs and start up his stockpiles again later? Do you have any evidence that he would not have started them up again? If not, why did he keep them hidden when he was not supposed to have them at all. If we had turned Saddam loose back in 2003 he could easily have built back up those stockpiles again by now. If he had, would you have supported the invasion later?

alan -- No credible WMD threat, no war. None of the other reasons you mention added up to enough of a threat to get a majority of Congress to authorize the war, let alone the overwhelming bipartisan consensus that you trumpet. Go back if you want to see what Members of Congress said in their floor statements and press releases when they explained their vote. The vote was about WMD's. Not about nation building, not about humanitarian internvention, not about getting our mojo back after 9/11. Even Hillary, who is to the right of most Democrats on this issue, notes that if she knew then what she knows now, not only would she have voted no, but THERE WOULDN'T EVEN HAVE BEEN A VOTE.

Terrye -- "if you are saying that the CIA had explicit evidence that Saddam did not have stockpiles of weapons in September and just decided to keep it to themselves"

No one knew exactly what was going on in Iraq. But the public record indicates that the CIA had evidence SUGGESTING the above was likely to be the case. My understanding, from "dclydew" link above and other stuff I have read, is that Tenet neglected to report this to his superiors, or else he did report it and they dismissed it. Again, I'm saying a responsible Administration looking to prevent Hussein from getting WMDs, as opposed to one simply seeking a rationale and pretext for going to war, would have taken that evidence and tried to prove or disprove it, rather than taken it and thrown it in the trash. Which is apparently what happened.

Actually, I supported the war at first for this reason. I've learned a lot over the past few years about the folly of idealism by gunpoint, particularly when one is trying to impose one's values on people and one doesn't speak their language, or understand their history and culture.

The contrast between our cold war policy of containment -- WHICH WORKED -- and the fiasco of the Bush Doctrine in practice could not be more stark. What we have tried these past few years is probably similar to what would have happened if Truman had truly been a lunatic and had decided to invade Russia or Red China in the aftermath of World War II or the Korean War.

Terrye: In all likelihood, Hussein didn't comply with the UN inspections because -- like any tinpot dictator -- he didn't want to show his own people, and his neighbors, that he was a paper tiger.

But you want American kids to get their limbs blown off as a consequence of these self-serving actions.

No, what's despicable is you using American kids getting their limbs blown off as part of your political folderol.

But ok, once again: it is result of the US allying itself with a weak country, ie, Britain. The idea was, to make it all OK for Blair, our 'valiant' ally, by going to that wonderful world forum, the United Nations. Therefore, Bush took his argument to the UN, boiling it down to one easily understood reason: WMD. Which EVERY INTELLIGENCE ORGANIZATION IN THE WORLD WAS CONVINCED EXISTED.

There were plenty of other real live IMPORTANT strategic reasons to attack Iraq: Saddam was financing terror operations in Israel; his dirty fingers were all over the first WTC event; Iraq sits right in the middle of the nastiest neighbourhood in the world, ON OIL, WHICH FUELS THE WEST'S CIVILIZATION. The USA could not allow this renegade - and powerful - and rich - thug continue to operate in such a very important zone, given 9/11.

Truly, I want to SCREAM when I see someone carrying on about "Bush Lied about WMDs", and therefore he should be IMPEACHED, and the US should pick up its marbles from Iraq and come home... I just wonder how on earth anyone anywhere can be so oblivious to the real world as to hold that opinion for more than 5 minutes!!!!

What no one has addressed is why the intelligence was so bad and why we have such a problem fighting two relatively small scale wars (Iraq and Afghanistan).

Clinton took the "peace dividend" and used it to dismantle the "on the ground" intelligence that really matters. He also gutted the military, reducing combat capabilities and troop strength by about 35%. He also passed up killing OBL so he could finish a round of golf as the hearsay charge claims.

Go to Roger's link to the American Thinker article on the history of the jihadist tradition in Islam. While we mourn the loss of 3,500 soldiers, the price we will pay if we #@!* this up will be many multiples of that number.

I also fear that the front will move from Iraq - the Al-Qaeda proclaimed front on the war against the West - eslewhere, to perhaps our shores. This is in addition to ceding great economic power to the Islamists by letting them control the oil assets of the Middle East.

I hope the muddle heading thinking espoused by Markus and his ilk gets firmly rebutted.

(On the other hand, since most of our minds are already made up on this issue....)

No, markus what you are ignoring is that the UN was saying since Saddam had weapons in the past and did not comply and turn those weapons over to be destroyed it was the belief of the UN weapons inspectors and every other intel agency on the planet that the weapons still existed. And so far as we know, they do somewhere or maybe they were destroyed, the truth is we still do not know with certainty what happened to them. So calling other people liars is premature.

And your use of the troops is self serving and cynical. To date the left either treats American servicemen and women as victims or victimizers, whichever suits your purpose. Saddam was not being contained, the cease fire had been violated and the sanctions regime was coming to an end. Your ignorance on this subject is staggering. You treat Saddam like a man in a cell with guards, rather than a dictator of a country who had not only violated a cease fire agreement but who was on his way to being free from any sanctions.

Markus: "I've learned a lot over the past few years about the folly of idealism by gunpoint, particularly when one is trying to impose one's values on people and one doesn't speak their language, or understand their history and culture."

The voters in January 2003 faced guns and bombs, but those were held by men who did not want Iraqis to vote.

What was the voter turnout again? Beyond 75%, IIRC--or at least beyond US voter turnout in 2004. I would hardly call that "imposing" anything.

***
I most sincerely doubt that you were on the side of the west in the cold war, but even supposing that you were, please explain to us how a policy of mutually assured destruction is any kind of impediment to a mentality that enthusiastically embraces martyrdom. Yeah, go ahead and tell us how that would work.

You are correect-I wonder how a man of this character managed to make it to DCI. It is troubling that the level of ineptness that can be found at the C.I.A., between leaks to the media and just plain wrong intell, nepotism, and the inability to have an agent able to go to Nigeria? We need an overhaul of the system-go back to the old days of cloak and dagger...

--, I supported the war at first for this reason. I've learned a lot over the past few years about the folly of idealism by gunpoint, --

Well, he kicked out another leg as to why we went in in WWII, must have really been all about the money..

Bostonian -- that's right, there were elections in Iraq. Shia voting to impose their will on Sunnis. Sunnis voting to save preserve whatever influence they could. Kurds voting for defacto independence. Fabulous. I'm a Kurdish independence sympathizer, but still it is hard to see how it was worth a single US life.

Of course, containment is not an option with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist outfits. As neoconservatives are fond of pointing out when it selectively suits their argument, "Al-Qaeda is not a nation, does not have uniformed troops operating under the laws and customs of war, has not signed the Geneva Convention and can hardly be seen as foreign power following treaty rules."

That is why these transnational groups need to be sought out and attacked, the way one attacks any other criminal syndicate. And in instances when a government IS supporting that syndicate, that government needs to be removed from power. There is a broad consensus on this in America, which is why 434 of 435 members of Congress voted to overthrow the Taliban.

The Baathist regime in Iraq, on the other hand, was being contained, and posed no threat to America.

Well, markus, this cannot *possibly* be the first time you have heard this, but I will say it anyway.

Jihadis like Al Qaeda are at war with the West, civilization, and rule by man in general--and they have been for centuries, since day one, likely. It is a war of ideas (which you would fight with cops).

Deposing one of the worst dictators in history and giving Iraqis the safety to vote sends a message to the world, to all dictators, to all their subjects, and to all victims of jihad.
It is a message your side has not cared to hear (or even endorse). It is this:

*We believe in representative government that is accountable to voters, government that is fundamentally a compromise among all parties.
*We believe that a majority of human beings prefer to have a say in their lives and are thus motivated to compromise.
*We believe that any group of people on the planet can achieve this kind of compromise, if someone honest makes sure nobody has a thumb on the scale.
*We believe in these things so much that we will fight for them, even for people we do not know.

Now if you cannot see this message as a direct threat and answer to jihad, you have not been paying attention.

***
I fully expect that your posts next week will hint about American neo-colonialism or other such malarkey, just as if I had never spoken. So be it.

I'm not a huge Rush Limbaugh fan, but I think he has been saying one thing that is absolutely correct: The big problem in this country is not ignorance, but people thinking they know things when they don't.

Ignorance can be neutral or irrelevant. In the right personality and on subject matter not that critical, it can even be rather charming. Willful ignorance about the politics of the day is neither neutral nor charming.

One can't possibly believe that the administration *lied* about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq unless one is willing to be willfully ignorant. Or take the MSM at face value--which amounts to the same thing.

"The Baathist regime in Iraq, on the other hand, was being contained, and posed no threat to America."

How was it being contained ? By flying missions every day and seeing Iraqi missiles being shot at our planes until they finally got one ? By filling the Swiss and Cayman bank accounts of Russians and French and Germans until everybody had enough money ?

The lefty anti-war types do not want to know that we have been at war since 1979 with these people. I would suggest a reading list.

Then you could read "The Looming Tower." The obsession with the "hedonostic" life style of Americans by Islamic radicals like Quttb (He hated Doris Day), sounds a lot like the Nazis about American "mongrels" in 1940.

As far as the CIA competence is concerned, you could read Bob Baer's "See No Evil" or Ruel Marc Gerecht's "Know Thine Enemy." Both suffered from the disdain of their CIA superiors who did not like to muddy their hands with the dirt of far-off places without four star hotels. Baer and Gerecht were among the very few who spoke the language of their target countries.

Then you could read "The Cell" about how the NYPD and the FBI ignored boxes and boxes of evidence of al Qeada in New York after the Meir Kahane assassination. That was three years before the first WTC bombing.

Bostonian -- "We believe in these things so much that we will fight for them, even for people we do not know."

Wow. Mainstream "conservativism" is not about defending America, it is now about a worldwide crusade for liberty. Sounds to me like Woodrow Wilson on steroids (or acid). But, I must say thank you, as a liberal American used to losing more often than winning. Read W.F. Buckley's latest column, he's horrified by people like you, and the electoral ditch you're driving the Republican party into with your insistence on taking up the white man's burden in Mesopotamia.

Mike K -- We saw how well the Baathist regime had been contained in March-May 2003, as we cakewalked into the briar patch. The Iraqi military machine was a joke, thanks to the entirely justifiable 1991 Gulf War, and the sanctions that were in place afterwards.

BTW, just who are "these people" that we've been at war with since 1979. Are you talking about the government that took our hostages that year, who spent the following decade trying to overthrow Saadam Hussein?

"Mainstream "conservativism" is not about defending America, it is now about a worldwide crusade for liberty."

No, that would be classical liberalism you are talking about there. However, it isn't the conservatives or the Republicans fault that classical liberals are no longer tolerated by the Democrats, and thus had nowhere else to go.

markus, I thought after our last, long discussion on that took up so much of Roger's bandwidth, you weren't going to play the disingenious leftists tricks anymore? It's still straight out of the communists progaganda playbook--whether you want to admit it or not. Do you consider being associated with groups like A.N.S.W.E.R. by your behavior to be an ok thing?

*When UN inspectors were kicked out in 1998, Saddam had some 6,000 tons of ingredients with which to make VX nerve gas -- only a litter of which could kill millions of people.

*Saddam had used this on Iraqi's before, and despite being required by treaty to account for it, did not.

*Saddam had long played "footsie" - as the game is called - with terrorists. Indeed, as one vet of OIF now living in Denver said, some of the fiercest fighting of the war was around Salmon Pak, Saddams training camp for terrorists. This vet said most were from Algeria - an important Islamist battleground.

*Saddam's government was the only one to openly celebrate the 9/11 attack on the US.

*Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act in October 1998. It called for changing Saddam's regime and instituting democratic govenment. (SO when Dems say "four years of failed Bush policy in Iraq," they are condemning Clinton policy too!)

*The ongoing costs of policing Iraq's "no fly" zones for an other 20 years was estimated at $300 billion - making the pacification effort look more like the investment in changing Islam than the rat-hole Dems imagine it to be (since they haven't got an anti-terrorist policy - at all)!

*As the war revealed, Saddam had nuke making parts on order from the now notorious and far more menacing nuke proliferating A. Q. Khan network - the father of Pakistan's Bomb.

*After the war, Saddam's nuke scientist - who was on no one's watch list - Mahdi Obeidi, trained at Colorado's School of Mines, revealed his secreting of a gas certrifuge for refining uranium into bomb. Saddam did intend to resume his nuke WMD program ASAP.
SEE http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15287

Given all this, what president could not have toppled Saddam? What president would regret doing so? Only one with no memory and knowledge of history - something the MSM is only too happy to provide!

Markus:
Indeed, I don't think I have called myself a mainstream conservative. I voted for Gore in 2000 (which I now regret), voted for Democrats for nearly 20 years.

Now the Democrats are unmasked as reactionary America -Firsters, and I am never going back.

Good list. You left out the widespread view at the time that the sanctions were collapsing. We could not have continued as we were, even had we wanted to or considered it a good idea.

Why are you wasting your time arguing with Markus, other than to keep your debating points fresh in mind? If we hadn't invaded Iraq he'd be complaining that we're wasting our time in Darfur instead of removing somebody corrupt we put in power.

Back to the original topic: Why is everybody so surprised about Tenet? There's plenty of blame to go around regarding the complete emasculation of the CIA over the last 30 years, led by the Donks but not argued against enough by the Elephs. I'm sure Wilson and Plame aren't atypical.

Well markus so much for we will bear any burden pay any price to advance the cause of liberty. The guy who said that was not a conservative Republican, he was John F. Kennedy. Back when Democrats cared about such things as civil rights and human rights and doing the right thing. Now they pander to terrorists and dictators. Tell me if AlQaida sits up a sanctuary in Iraq from which to attack American interests, whose side will you be on?

"BTW, just who are "these people" that we've been at war with since 1979. Are you talking about the government that took our hostages that year, who spent the following decade trying to overthrow Saadam Hussein?"

I guess you really don't know. They are the radical Islamists who want a new Caliphate. They include the Shi'ia who let al Qeada Sunnis escape from Afghanistan after we invaded. They include the Sunni followers of Zarkawi who sought shelter in Iran when we got too close to them. They are the who-knows-what who bombed the Spanish railroads to cow the Socialists into running from Iraq. Now the Spanish police are uncovering plots every month proving that you cannot negotiate with Islam which was taught by Muhammed that lying to infidels is allowed.

I don't expect lefties to know this. They rely on the adults to defend them while they whine and snivel about how long it is taking to get to grandma's house.

Can anyone posit a theory as to why in the 60 minutes interview with Tenet, nothing was ever mentioned about the ï¿½Jamie Gerelic Wallï¿½?

Clintonï¿½s administration seemed to want to treat this as a criminal investigation, thus the lack of shared info between the pertinent agencies. So, no connecting of the dots was possible.
jhardw

Wow. Mainstream "conservativism" is not about defending America, it is now about a worldwide crusade for liberty. Sounds to me like Woodrow Wilson on steroids (or acid).

Or Woodrow Wilson meets Leon Trotsky. I'm afraid liberals (including US "conservatives", the most virulent kind right now) will keep on being surprised at the failure of ideology when it comes up against the non-liberal reality of the world. Americans who believe the USA is a mere "proposition nation" can't be expected to understand the actions of people who actually see themselves as distinct people. Such people have a religious attachment to their ideals. Homo sovieticus move over. Homo americanus has arrived. Too bad it'll all end in tears.

Coisty,
I didn't think that compromise was "ideology." But it is an interesting take on things.

All of the WMD discussions assume that the situation in Iraq would have been static. What would the situation be at this time had we not invaded? Can anyone reasonably conclude that Saddam would not be pursuing weapons of mass destruction fueled by oil for food money, continuing to support the Hamas suicide bombings at a greater level, ended the no fly zones by shooting down our fighters, arming who knows who to do who knows what.

And before you think all of this unreasonable, what makes you think things would have gotten better or remained the same? And please don't tell me about the efficacy the UN and sanctions, unless you are a Russian or French arms dealer.

I don't know the answer either, but we all have to stop acting like the current situation is the worst possible outcome.

Are you guys trying to out do each other? Is there a prize for the most stupid comment in each topic?

Steven -- So I'm a bandwith-eating pinko. Cute. Last time, you said I was a pinko who doesn't address the points people make in their rebuttals, and when I asked for evidence you told me to go to Google cache.

Listen: this is America. We speak English here. Also, we ask accusers to provide evidence behind their accusations, rather than making the accused hunt down exculpatory evidence.

My reply to Alan, and his reasonable question: What would the situation be at this time had we not invaded? Two valid points are 1) we don't know, and 2) it makes no difference, since we're there now. Still, we're talking history here (as is Roger's initial post, and Tenet's book) and we're also trying to decide as a nation whether or not to listen to the people who got us into the present situation, AND WOULD DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN even knowing what they now know.

My answer to Alan is based on my conclusion that Hussein was a rational actor, an evil rational actor to be sure, but still rational. No less irrational than Hafez al-Assad was when slaughtered 20,000 Muslim Brotherhood members in 1982.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hama_Massacre#The_Massacre

Thus, I see him as a lot less dangerous than others. And I can't challenge other to create a CREDIBLE scenario in which he remained in power and we ended up worse off than we are today, attempting to stitch together a country when don't even speak their language, our military is stretched to the breaking point, the rest of the world despising us.

The worse case scenario -- Hussein getting a hold of a chemical weapon and giving it to his Islamist enemies -- was nothing but groundless fearmongering. Here's a good test: how worried was Israel about Hussein during the last fifteen years he was in power? As neocons never hesitated to point out when it was convenient to their argument of the moment, the answer was HARDLY AT ALL.

"The key fact about the alleged Perle incident is its triviality in comparison with the lie about WMD's -- a lie which also appears to be INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIABLE."

If you want to see a liar, look in the mirror. You've been shown why your contention is not true over and over. You continue to repeat it, and ignore the replies. This behavior has been explicitly called out by me and others, including the aforementioned long topic. I have no idea whether you are "pinko" or not, but I do know you could play one of their "useful idiots" on TV.

I'm an optimist. I really hate to comletely give up on a person. You just became the third, in my 40 years on this planet.

Steven -- Actually, I'm the one here debating in good faith. You're the person who can't tolerate anyone who disagrees with you.

1) In September 2002 the CIA gathered credible evidence suggesting that Hussein did not have an active WMD program.
2) Tenet did not include this evidence in his October 1, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).
3) Instead, he claimed in December 2002 that proving he had an active program would be a "slam dunk." Based on the September evidence, I characterized this as a "lie about WMD's -- a lie which also appears to be INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIABLE."

I'm still waiting for someone to challenge any of these assertions. Did Tenet not have access to the September evidence? Was that evidence in fact included in the October 2002 report? Was there good reason to believe that it was untrue? If so, what were those reasons?

"Actually, I'm the one here debating in good faith. You're the person who can't tolerate anyone who disagrees with you."

Trouble for you, "anyone" is not equal to "markus". You might note that Terrye and I, as just one example, have had some rather heated disagreements that seemed to continue to be discussions anyway. There is one person in this debate that "tolerates" disagreement just fine by selectively ignoring it, and it ain't me. If I stick out in my disdain for you, it's only because I'm more blunt.

And you are not debating in good faith. You don't get to cherry pick which things you talk about and which ones you don't, then call it good faith. You won't engage with any kind of intellectual honesty. Thus, there is no point in trying.

I need a good shorthand response for everything you say. I'm sure it will save time for me and everyone else in the future.

No, I didn't catch your debate with Terrye. Look most readers here, you're both part of the small, beleagured group of pro-war independent-minded voters. You both agree on the mendacity of anyone who disagrees with either of you on foreign policy, and on the idiocy of any Democrat besides Joe Lieberman. I'm not sure what you would have to argue about.

Anyway, the debate that war supporters are really going to have to win will occur later this year, not with people like me, but with Republicans that are sick and tired and embarrassed about spending half a TRILLION taxpayer dollars to referree a civil war in Mesopotamia. Particularly Republican Congressmen and Senators running for reelection in 2008 that feel this way. Barring a miracle in Iraq, time is on the side of the antiwar forces.

In other words, any American success in Iraq is like pissing in markus' Wheaties. Not that I'm surprised.

I saw Tenet on Charlie Rose last night. He was pretty unimpressive. The second guest was really inspiring, Judea Pearl. Such a great man. Someone with a real reason to be filled with hatred, and what he spending his time doing instead? Promoting Jewish-Muslim reconcilliation through journalism and music.

April 29, 2007: A bad day for Georges

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