George Tenet on the staircase with the neocons (Juan Cole)

[laststeamtrain]

George Tenet on the staircase with the neocons
In his book and on TV, former CIA Director George Tenet remembers all the things he should've said before we invaded Iraq but didn't.

By Juan Cole

Apr. 30, 2007 | The French call it "the spirit of the staircase" (l'esprit d'escalier), the clever reply to someone that comes to you on your way up to the bedroom after a cocktail party. In his new book, released Monday, former CIA Director George Tenet has delivered himself of hundreds of pages on the staircase, imagining what he should have said or could have said to Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and the other neoconservatives who marched the country to war in Iraq using the pretext of Sept. 11. In his April 29 interview with "60 Minutes" touting the book, Tenet came across as a spectacularly tragic Walter Mitty, daydreaming about how things would have been different if only he had spoken up, if he'd only been a James Bond-style spymaster instead of a timid, fawning bureaucrat. But of course, when it really mattered, at the critical juncture of his seven-year tenure as CIA chief, Tenet said nothing.

Tenet has revealed for the first time that he encountered Pentagon advisor Richard Perle on the day after the Sept. 11 attacks. As Tenet recounted the story on "60 Minutes," Perle "said to me, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday; they bear responsibility.'" Tenet told interviewer Scott Pelley that he was startled at the allegation. "It's September the 12th," said Tenet. "I've got the manifest with me that tells me al-Qaida did this. Nothing in my head that says there is any Iraqi involvement in this in any way, shape or form, and I remember thinking to myself, as I'm about to go brief the president, 'What the hell is he talking about?'"

Is that really what Tenet should have been thinking to himself? Just, "What the hell is he talking about?" Perle was then the chairman of the civilian Defense Policy Board, which had great influence over Pentagon policy, and he was intimately linked to Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the No. 2 and 3 men at the Department of Defense. He was also close to Cheney and to the latter's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Perle had coauthored with Feith and others a 1996 white paper for Israeli politician Bibi Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud Party, advocating a war against Iraq. Perle believed that the Saddam Hussein regime posed a dire threat to Israel and that overthrowing it would enhance Israel's security. If Tenet had been as street savvy as he likes to pretend -- what with being a Greek from Queens and all -- he should have been thinking, "Aha! So that is how the neoconservatives are going to play this thing. How can I head them off at the pass?"

Tenet's experience was nearly identical to that of former terrorism czar Richard Clarke. In his own "60 Minutes" interview three years ago, and in his 2004 book, "Against All Enemies," Clarke said that he met Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Sept. 12, 2001, and Rumsfeld was pushing for an attack on Iraq in response: "We have to bomb Iraq," he is alleged to have said. Clarke was so surprised that he said he at first thought Rumsfeld was joking.

Tenet encountered the same skepticism or unconcern about al-Qaida in high Bush administration officials as had Clarke. He confirmed that the CIA had ongoing covert operations in Afghanistan from 1999, but that he could not get the go-ahead from either President Clinton or President Bush to attempt to overthrow the Taliban and kill or capture Osama bin Laden. He maintains that in the summer of 2001, he sought a meeting with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at which he presented a briefing. As he recalled to "60 Minutes," "Essentially, the briefing says, there are gonna be multiple spectacular attacks against the United States. We believe these attacks are imminent. Mass casualties are a likelihood." He told "60 Minutes" that his message to her was: "We need to consider immediate action inside Afghanistan now. We need to move to the offensive." Rice has denied that she received any such specific information or suggestions from Tenet.

In his interview on April 29, Tenet alleged that Rice delegated the issue of immediate action in Afghanistan to "third-tier officials." When pressed as to why he did not go straight to the president, Tenet implied that he did not have the ability to put things on Bush's agenda, while Rice did. In the cliquish Bush White House, he was perhaps not the insider he had thought he was. Or perhaps he did not want to risk Bush's ire and was pressing Rice to take the heat for urging on the lackadaisical Bush a covert operation he had already once refused to consider.

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/04/30/tenet_book/print.html

[babylonsister]

1. Wow, Cole is on the ball! I read your snips; this looks good. nt

[Lint Head]

2. George Tenet is a coward that didn't have the balls to

stand up to chimpy. :dem:

[Old and In the Way]

3. Tenet's defense is that he couldn't sit Bush down and explain the facts?

How sad. It does make him look pretty feeble. Nothing new in this expose except maybe how ineffectual Tenent really was.

[babylonsister]

4. Perhaps that was the wh protocol the blivet instilled there.

:shrug: I put nothing past anyone, and it proved out that Tenet was not in the 'in' crowd, loyalty neither given or received.

[Old and In the Way]

6. Plausible Denialability. He was "Out of the Loop", just like dad.

No doubt they didn't want Bush communicating with DCI...that would have been hard to explain why they ignored the warnings of impeding 9/11 attach. The one briefing he had, Bush's comment was, "Ok, you've covered your ass." Says all you need to know about their contempt for intelligence.

Tenet should have figured this out on 9/11...and resigned immediately. That would have sent warning flags up that all was not right in the WH. Instead, he served as designated dummy...not once, but twice. Then he got as Medal of Freedom and the pResidential boot.

[izzie]

5. I guess he wants to worm his way out of what he did.

Lets face it they all had a hold of Bush's coat tails and were going to ride in with their hero. I have thought that this was a hero thing to Bush and in his own mind he was going to be a great world leader with doing it. Second rate country that his father had said had a army that was either second of third best in the world. Build it up so it all sounded better just as they did with the bombs that only kill the fighters. As if the GD bomb can pick who to kill. Look at what Bush has done by not knowing what was what. His father knew to not do it and had some brains and smarts even if he did not pass it down. Plus Bush Jr. would only hear people who would do as he wanted. Crazy. We should send them all to Cuba and give them orange suits and save people every place.

[laststeamtrain]

7. Dust off the Nuremberg Files. Let's get it on...

Impeachment? Removal from office?

Not enough. Not nearly enough.

For violations of:

* The United Nations Charter
* The 1945 Nuremberg Charter
* International humanitarian law
* The Geneva Conventions
???

What all the drips & drabs & occasional gushers (like Tenent's book) point to is WAR CRIMES.
There should be charges against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the WHIG, etc etc (get 'em all). It's civilization we're talking about. I'm not a big fan ("Civilization is the carrier of repressive ideologies"-Charles Fourier) but it seems to be the best we can do SO FAR.

Deliberate war of aggression. That's what we've witnessed. It's been plain. Straight, no chaser. The thing itself.

Sorry,it's my own little personal gut check time, but it does seem to be really, really important to say the plain words right now. THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION & ALL THEIR AIDERS & ABETTORS ARE GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.

Humanity needs to answer back.

Thanks for listening.