US President George W. Bush seemed quite nervous on TV last Sunday as he defended his policy on Iraq. The American press now has its hands full in trying to draw something positive from the president's appearance on "Meet the Press."
But still more irony can be seen in the fact that February 5 has been chosen two years running for rhetoric aimed at what Socrates termed "making the worse cause appear the better"--last year by Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN and Thursday by CIA Director George Tenet at Georgetown University.
As in the case of Powell's spurious depiction of the threat from Iraq, Tenet's disingenuous tour de force becomes more embarrassing the closer you look.
Tenet chose to defend the indefensible--the bogus National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) hurriedly conjured up in September 2002 to support spurious charges made by Vice President Dick Cheney on August 26, 2002 in beating the drum for war on Iraq. The conclusions of that estimate have now been proven --pure and simple--wrong.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern02122004.html