If the latest is true, then ****ing fire him. Fire him, then. If he's the fall guy, or even if it's utterly legitimate, fire him, fire him, fire him now. Doing this stuff at the end of the news week doesn't make it blow over. If it's his fault, he needs to get fired. President George W. Bush made the case for war -- the case for sending Americans into harm's way -- with false intelligence. As a direct result, thousands died. If this is Tenet's fault, then fire him. Now. And, of course, I don't believe it IS his fault. I believe he was put in the extremely difficult position of his intelligence agency being used for political purposes, but if that's NOT the case... If the administration was innocent and it actually WAS Tenet's fault, then ****ing fire him. Now. And that may happen. If the story doesn't go away, the sacrificial lamb will indeed be sacrificed. But don't let this particular moment pass without respecting the genius of Karl Rove, who found the one guy who could take the fall without hitting the president too hard. I do wonder what the terms of the sword falling were, but more than that I wonder, if it was his fault, when he will be fired. If he's willing to take the blame for compromising American credibility -- at home and abroad -- in this most important time, then he should be fired. He should be fired for whatever part of this fiasco he was responsible for. But most of all he should be fired for going along. Before AND (especially) after this trumped up war which was conducted by liars and suffered by dead Iraqi civilians and dead American patriots who had no idea they were fighting based on lies. If that's Tenet's fault (because it god damned well is somebody's) then ****ing fire him now. It's not an eye for an eye (since he won't suffer thousands of deaths), but it's the best we can do. That is, before finding out who else was involved. We'll get the rest of em later. Meantime, if Tenet wants to fall on a sword he should fall on a real one and never work in this country again.
A couple of questions...well a LOT actually, but the main ones... If Tenent knew the statement was wrong, why wait until now after the lie was exposed, to come clean? Why didn't he come clean right after the SOTU? Let's say for the sake of argument that Bush was in the dark about this; wouldn't you (as pResident of the most powerful county in the world) instead of pointing fingers and whining "it wasn't my fault", be pissed off and calling for all kinds of inquiries? And what about the claim by the CIA that they had doubts about the "sentence in question" months before the SOTU? And another thing, after all Britain has done, after all Tony Blair has done; now Bush and Co are turning around and placing the blame on Britain’s intel?
There is documentation that proves the white house new the intelligence was bad at least 4 months before the speech, this is not going to go away.
July 12, 2003 Bush Expresses Confidence in C.I.A. Director By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 10:11 a.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Saturday he had confidence in CIA Director George Tenet despite his agency's failure to warn Bush against making allegations about Iraq's nuclear weapons program later found false. ``Yes I do, absolutely,'' Bush said. ``I've got confidence in George Tenet. I've got confidence in the men and women who work at the CIA and I look forward to working with them as we win this war on terror.'' The president spoke in Abuja, Nigeria, at the end of a five-country trip through Africa. Bush asserted in his State of the Union address in January that Iraq had sought nuclear materials from Africa. Nearly six months later, the White House acknowledged the charge was false, and the tempest that followed has shadowed Bush on his five-country trip through Africa. Bush considers the matter closed, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. ``The president has moved on,'' he said. In a carefully scripted mea culpa, the White House on Friday blamed the CIA for its January misstep, with Bush saying the CIA had reviewed his address and did not raise any alarms. Tenet finished the job hours later with a dramatic statement accepting responsibility. The statement on Iraq seeking nuclear material ``did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed,'' Tenet said. ``It was a mistake,'' he added. The one-two punch was designed to quell a growing political storm, fueled in part by members of Congress and Democratic presidential hopefuls, that challenged the credibility of the administration's arguments that Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program before the U.S. invasion in March. Administration officials said that despite the miscue they did not expect Tenet to resign. He is the lone holdover from the Clinton administration and, while distrusted by some conservatives, has enjoyed Bush's confidence. ``I've heard no discussion along those lines,'' CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said Friday night. Tenet acknowledged Friday that the CIA had tried unsuccessfully for months to substantiate the British allegation on which the claim was based and that State Department intelligence analysts believed the intelligence was ``highly dubious.'' Yet neither stopped Bush from making the claim in a single sentence of his annual address to the nation. ``These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president,'' Tenet conceded in a statement. ``First, CIA approved the president's State of the Union address before it was delivered,'' he said. ``Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my agency. And third, the president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound.'' The director took his cue from Bush and Rice, who hours earlier blamed the error on the CIA. ``I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services,'' Bush told reporters in Uganda. If the CIA director had concerns about the information, ``these doubts were not communicated to the president,'' Rice added. Key members of Congress called for someone to be held accountable. ``The director of central intelligence is the principal adviser to the president on intelligence matters. He should have told the president. He failed. He failed to do so,'' said Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan. Tenet sought to answer what he called ``legitimate questions'' about the CIA's conduct. He said CIA officials, after reviewing portions of the draft speech, raised some concerns with White House national security aides that prompted changes in the speech's language. But he said the CIA failed to prevent the remark from being uttered despite doubts about its validity. CIA officials recognized at the beginning that the allegation was based on ``fragmentary intelligence'' gathered in late 2001 and early 2002, the director said. But, he said: ``From what we know now, agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa.'' A former diplomat was sent by the CIA to the region to check on the allegations. He reported back that a Nigerian official he met said he was unaware of any contract signed during his tenure ``between Niger and rogue states'' for the sale of uranium, Tenet said. But the former official also described a businessman approaching him in 1999, insisting on a meeting with an Iraqi delegation to discuss ``expanding commercial relations'' between Iraq and Niger, Tenet said. ``The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales,'' Tenet said. The diplomat has alleged that he believed Vice President Dick Cheney's office was apprised of the findings of his trip. But Tenet said the CIA did not brief the president, vice president or other senior administration officials. British officials in fall 2002 discussed making the Niger information public. The CIA then expressed their reservations to the British about the quality of the intelligence, Tenet said. A CIA report last October mentioned the allegations but did not give them full credence, stating ``we cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore.'' Because of the doubts, Tenet said he never included the allegations in his own congressional testimonies or public statements.
I could say that this looks like a pretty clumsy attempt, but hey, we've been buying worse for a while now, so I just have no sesne of how the general public will take this. So many things about this don't add up...the initial ( and public) disagreement between the CIA and WH was over the fact that the CIA didn't agree with the WH assesment of the threat...the fact that the WH co-ordinated it's own intel effort stemmed from not recieving the support that it wanted, not from recieving too much... And it's nice that Bush considers the matter closed. Damned sporting of him to have considered it open for a few days while he was away...This is like the "Now is not the time to speak out against the war!" never ceasing argument...when, exactly, did Bush consider the matter open? At first we got stonewalled, then we got a brief semi-concession which Bush basically later denied, and now the matter is closed?!?!? We're not talking about a parking ticket snaffu here, we're talking about misleading the public in the State of the Union Address for the purposes of leading us into war... If this works, I am really depressed with , well, us.
This is an audio link. Go to the website and listen to Friday the 11th show. http://www.kcrw.com/show/lr Cheney's office knew a week before the State of the Union that the evidence was wrong. Cheney went on press shows and was more emphatic about Saddam and nukes than GW Bush was.
Even in taking the blame, Tenet doesn't clear the Bush administration for purposefully seeking to dupe the public into supporting the war: The CIA did properly express concern, but the administration clearly opted to Clintonesquely include the nuclear reference anyway. The Administration still lied. It isn't over. Tenet took the blame for not putting his foot down. But at no point does he say the Administration didn't lie. He simply states that the President had every right to beleive that the speech was factually correct. The Administration gave a smorgasbord of justifications for this war that keep being proven untrue. Sadly, whenever the Administration is caught in a lie, it's die hard supporters eight ignore the evidence or simply state "well, this is just one of the many reasons." You don't justify a war by throwing a bunch of rationale against the wall and seeing what sticks. The only justifications that have yet to be proven untrue are the ones in Wolfowitz's document initially proposing this pre-emptive strike policy--oil, military presence, etc. I find it depressing that the public is so easily duped and destracted by public officials. Surely, 2-party partisanship isn't the only lense through which to evaluate public officials.
JeffB: Don't be too depressed, buddy. Check the latest Washington Post/ABC poll and the CBS one from a few days ago. The tide is turning. People will be held accountable. And the election's more than a year off. The ones that should be depressed are the ones who keep coming around here smugly predicting a landslide Bush victory. The way things are going he'll be lucky if McCain doesn't run again.
Hey we're back to old Wofowitz claiming we diden't invade based on WMD. This time it is Rumsfeld. When do you think Bush will say it wasn't WMD? A quote from a good article on all the fingerpointing as the Bush Admin tries to deny deception. ********************* On still another tack, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday told Congress that the decision to go to war was far more complex than the WMD issue and really was not centered on whether Iraq had new or ongoing WMD programs. “The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass murder,” Rumsfeld said. “We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on Sept. 11.” Rumsfeld’s statement echoed an earlier assertion from his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, who said the WMD issue was chosen “for convenience” so the administration could lay out a case against Iraq at the United Nations. more
Case closed? CIA Stopped Iraq Nuclear Mention in Oct. Speech WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA intervened to stop the White House from making a reference to Iraq (news - web sites) seeking uranium from Niger in a presidential speech last October, according to senior U.S. officials, the Washington Post said on Sunday. Three months before a less specific reference to the same intelligence was used in President Bush's January State of the Union address, CIA Director George Tenet argued to White House officials it should not be used because it came from only a single source, the newspaper reported, citing one senior official. The Post cited another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence as saying the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegations, which turned out to be forged. The report said it was unclear why Tenet personally intervened to prevent the intelligence about Niger from appearing in the earlier presidential speech but did not do so again for the State of the Union address in January. Speaking in Abuja on Saturday, Bush said he had confidence in Tenet and considered the controversy over false U.S. claims to be closed. Tenet took responsibility on Friday for the claim by Bush over Iraq's nuclear ambitions.
I was screaming at the TV set Friday night when this news came out. Watching Bush sitting in a chair with the leader of an African nation (sorry, I lost track of his itinerary) and passing the buck to Tenet. Bush wanted this Iraq war from way back. Of course he was an easy mark for Wolfowitz ("he tried to kill your dad") and Condoleeza ("money, oil, and money"). By the way, Condoleeza Rice would play a mean game of poker. That woman has got lying down to an art form. I would be surprised if Tenet resigned though. He knows too much. He's in it up to his neck along with the rest of them. If the ax falls on the 9/11 investigations, Tenet's will not be the only head in the basket.
Tenet Says Official Wanted Iraq Claim By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - CIA Director George Tenet told members of Congress a White House official insisted that President Bush's State of the Union address include an assertion about Saddam Hussein's nuclear intentions that had not been verified, a Senate Intelligence Committee member said Thursday. Sen. Dick Durbin, who was present for a 4 1/2-hour appearance by Tenet behind closed doors with Intelligence Committee members Wednesday, said Tenet named the official. But the Illinois Democrat said that person's identity could not be revealed because of the confidentiality of the proceedings. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=4&u=/ap/20030717/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq_49 Come on! Say it with me! Dick Chaney! Yeah! I knew you could...
Ladies and Gentlemen, behold the inner workings of Batman Jones' mind: I've found something new to complain about! There's a new conspiracy that the people must be made aware of! Yes, now I've figured it out! The way to be a true American is to belittle every single decision its leaders make! Never give them the benefit of the doubt, always assume they are trying to screw the average voter, and always assume they are trying their best to kill as many people as possible for no reason! Forget about the fact I don't know anything about the intelligence industry, or for that matter, foreign diplomacy, the armed services, terror organizations or matters of national security! That's beside the point! I demand, despite not knowing anything about it, that the CIA be 100% correct 100% of the time, even when this means relying on the intelligence agencies of other counties, for instance Italy! If they are wrong, fire them! Now! ****ing **** **** ****ing **** d***** NOW! Man I'm feeling bitter. Maybe I can make others feel that way too if I really try hard. I mean *really* hard, because my efforts so far have yielded nothing. I'm beginning to think people aren't listening to me! It's time for something outrageous! Hey, pass that bowl back over here. Where did my Birkenstocks go? What time is that big naked protest again?
Ladies and Gentlemen, behold the inner workings of Trader_Jorge's mind: **faint echo of crickets chirping**
Sadly, this speaks volumes for the inner workings of your mind while saying little about Batman Jones'.
LMAO! I think RMTex's mind got the best representation in all of this. ... Maybe this "ladies and gentlemen" and representation of people's inner minds deserves its own thread. Maybe?
