‘There was never a serious debate’
They come as a complete shock to, well, none of you, but according to former CIA chief George Tenet, the president and top officials in his White House were determined to go to war in Iraq in 2002, and didn’t much care about reality.
George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.
The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.
“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.
You don’t say. The Bush gang didn’t much care about diplomacy, the seriousness of the Iraqi threat, or competing ideas? Who ever would have thought it?
For a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, Tenet doesn’t seem terribly impressed with his former superiors in the White House, and seems all too aware of the fact that he’s been made something of a scapegoat. According to the NYT, which obtained a copy of the book in advance, Cheney is characterized as arrogant and out of touch, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley are careless, and the president largely lives in a bubble. It’s an interesting insight from a key insider, but it’s not exactly jaw-dropping news.
Of course, Tenet’s career, much to his dismay, has come to be defined by two words: “slam dunk.” The former CIA director, however, claims to have an explanation for the phrase.
Mr. Tenet says he decided to write the memoir in part because the infamous “slam dunk” episode had come to define his tenure at C.I.A.
He gives a detailed account of the episode, which occurred during an Oval Office meeting in December 2002 when the administration was preparing to make public its case for war against Iraq.
During the meeting, the deputy C.I.A. director, John McLaughlin, unveiled a draft of a proposed public presentation that left the group unimpressed. Mr. Tenet recalls that Mr. Bush suggested that they could “add punch” by bringing in lawyers trained to argue cases before a jury.
“I told the president that strengthening the public presentation was a ‘slam dunk,’ a phrase that was later taken completely out of context,” Mr. Tenet writes. “If I had simply said, ‘I’m sure we can do better,’ I wouldn’t be writing this chapter — or maybe even this book.”
I find this very hard to believe. The “slam dunk” wasn’t the intelligence, but the ability to sell the intelligence? To hear Tenet explain it, the phrase hardly makes any sense.
Regardless, add Tenet to the (growing) list of Bush aides who learned too late that loyalty to the president is rarely reciprocated. If Tenet had realized this sooner, and had the courage to say something before it was too late, he might have made a difference.
If he really wanted to promote his book, he should consider throwing his Medal of Freedom into the potomac as a form of protest. Doubt that will happen.
I’m guessing we’re going to get a lot of these books, esp. after the Nightmare ends on 1.20.09. Each will generally be a bland memoir with one “shocking revelation” from a former insider (Tonight on 60 Minutes: Dana Perino says that George W. Bush only watched Fox News).
Yawn…unless someone is going to make a stand now, when there is still a chance to slap the lazy MSM upside the head, these people won’t be making any difference for their country.
Must be quite a few ghosts keeping George awake at night. Don’t those dead soldiers and dead Iraqi children know he was awarded a Medal Of Freedom?
Funny how he didn’t think it would be important to highlight any of his concerns before the war, but now that the war is a total disaster and he’s been officially scapegoated, he decides to speak out.
And of course BushCo will brand George Tenet a “disgruntled ex-employee” in ten… nine… eight…
LG is right. After leaving office, many of Bush’s yes men will write memoirs trying to cast their spinelessness and stupidity in a kinder light. Good luck with that, guys.
There are others in that same situation today. Would that they could find some courage.
While I do think that this new after-the-fact explanation of the “slam dunk” phrase reeks of the “dog ate my homework” scale of believablity, the fact of the matter is, as a matter of selling the story to the American people via the compliant news media environment of 2002 – it certainly was a “slam dunk”
Tenet might have added that he read Paul O’Neil’s “Price of Loyalty”, where it was revealed that the Bushies, just days after the inauguration, were planning on invading Iraq.
The WMD argument was bullcrap. It was the fig leaf for imperialism. Hopefully after 3 years of soul-searching and 549 pages of ass-covering, Tenet will recognize the obvious.
Re #6: The Price of Loyalty was written by Ron Suskind, about and with the cooperation of Paul O’Neill (in case any of you are looking for the book).
Tenet has issues…
It seems like Tenet is troubled less by his personal culpability for getting us into the quagmire than he is by BushCo scapegoating him. Apparently being fed bogus information by crooks intent on starting an illegal war wasn’t “the most despicable thing that ever happened” to him, but being blamed for the war decision is?
i don’t have the time to look it up, but bob somerby has, for a very long time, argued that tenent meant precisely what he says he meant by “slam dunk.” if you study the context in which the remark appears in the woodward book, i don’t see how you can disagree. do a little searching around somerby’s site for the details.
Tenet also describes the “slam dunk” comment in the one percent doctrine, by suskind. Tenet comes off well in the book.
In this book, according to suskind, the slam dunk comment came at a marketing meeting after the decision to do iraq had already been made. The topic at the meeting was how best to sell the war to the public – not whether Saddam had wmd or not. Makes sense to me. BTW since when did gwb start relying on the opinions of others in making decisions. Does anyone think gwb based his decision to do iraq on Tenet’s opinion?
The slam dunk comment was leaked to the media to provide cover to gwb if /when things didn’t go as planned.
I’ll read tentet’s book when it comes out.
add Tenet to the (growing) list of Bush aides who learned too late that loyalty to the president is rarely reciprocated.
Nope, sorry. He’s already on my list of shameless, souless s.o.bs who are running like hell from the disaster they helped create (while still making a profit).
My only question: Can this book be used as evidence against him during a trial?
While each of these kiss and tell books reveal or confirm pieces of the puzzle, the big shoes are still left to drop, like what was Cheney’s and Bush’s motivation to go after Saddam? Was the plot hatched in Cheney’s infamous meeting with the oil executives? Was it really Bush’s revenge motive? I’d like to have someone spell that all out in a book.
If Tenet had realized this sooner, and had the courage to say something before it was too late, he might have made a difference.
There are others in that same situation today. Would that they could find some courage.
Yeah, like the vastly-overrated Colin Powell, who should be remembered for the fact that the first time he stepped onto history’s stage was when he wrote the first report – a whitewash – of My Lai. He had a lot of experience sucking and swallowing in public, just like Tenet has.
They’re both worthless pieces of shit. The reason “Doing the Right Thing” is such a lauded virtue is because it’s never done when it’s easy, but when it’s hard.
what was Cheney’s and Bush’s motivation to go after Saddam?
Comment by petorado
300 billion barrels of oil under Iraq. At today’s prices, approximately 18 trillion dollars worth.
I agree with Howard in saying that Tenet’s correct. Because they weren’t asking about the intel. They were asking about the sales pitch. That’s all they were concerned with, as they had already been pimping the intel for months. Not that this is much better for Tenet. He wasn’t much more than a Yes-Man and really should have been in the intel business, and not helping with the marketing campaign.
I also got that from Somersby. I stopped reading the Howler years ago, as I found I was stealing too much material, but that guy really got things right.
Here’s the defreese take on the chronology.
Tenet had some intel – some of it he knew was questionable, dubious or not supported. Fine, that’s the way the intel community works; if he knew with certainty, he’d have allowed GWB to say that **our** intel knew that Iraq was seeking yellowcake from Africa instead of the mendacious fudge used by GWB and Stephen Hadley that it was the Brits that made the claim.
Tenet’s claim is entirely correct; if you want to spin the case for WMDs, it was easily a slam dunk – ‘unaccounted for’ and ‘possibly’ were important caveats that the President’s team chose to minimize or outright purge from their political statements…just so long as it was tenuously supported by the underlying intel.
That’s why the ‘Phase II’ Senate Select Intel Committe report is still vital and salient; they have *not* compared what the Bush team said vs. what was in the intel. Surprisingly, the chair of that committee, Jay Rockefeller, hasn’t piped up much about this to my knowledge. He needs to pound that cudgel ruthlessly because there are a ton of unanswered questions and, more importantly, many *unasked* questions. Right now, there is a small effort by Waxman in the House, but the Senate reports have had a little more heft when they have been released, especially since the GOP used those reports to blame everything all on the intel community.
/rant mode off.
It is a slam dunk that the WH wanted to attack Iraq and would have used any opportunity to do so.