Ahh - the spinning on Tenet is in full swing! The fall guy has fallen!

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

Just an example of how this thing is being spun. Everyhing from 9/11 to WMD is being pinned to this guys jacket as he sinks into the river with his concrete sneakers. It's deplorable. At least the Washington Post is questioning whether Tenet is a sacrificial lamb. DUH!!! http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13986-2004Jun3.html


CNN - "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- After being dogged by heavy criticism over questionable intelligence on Iraq and terrorism since the September 11, 2001 attacks, George Tenet resigned Thursday as the director of the CIA."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/03/tenet.resigns/index.html

NYT - "Government officials and people close to Mr. Tenet said the classified report was a detailed account of mistakes and miscalculations by American intelligence agencies on whether Iraq possessed illicit weapons before the United States invaded last year."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/politics/04REPO.html?hp

Faux News - "WASHINGTON — After intense scrutiny over the handling of the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq, CIA Director George Tenet resigned as head of the U.S. intelligence agency, President Bush announced Thursday."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,121665,00.html

USA Today - "WASHINGTON — CIA director George Tenet's resignation was announced by President Bush on Thursday, ending a seven-year tenure marked by criticism of the agency's failure to prevent the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and its inaccurate judgment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-06-03-tenet_x.htm

Marin Independent Journal - "WASHINGTON - George J. Tenet, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, has resigned after months in which the CIA has been criticized for failing to head off the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and for apparently overestimating the threat posed by deadly weapons in Iraq."
http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24410~2192382,00.html

[Birthmark]

1. That's weird.

...because I read that President Bush said Tenet did a great job. ???

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

3. That's all Bush needed to say. They new full well how the press would

swarm this way!

[LittleApple81]

4. This is going to be a bloodbath for Tenet. I wonder if the CIA is

going to go on stealth attack mode. It seemed that everybody at the CIA was sincerely sad to see Tenet go.

[central scrutinizer]

21. just a clever ploy

Damning with faint praise is as old as the hills. Clearly they want it spun like this: the great compassionate conservative is allowing Tenet to save face by "resigning" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) but really our decisive God-anointed leader is showing his gravitas.

<>

[Spentastic]

2. You know what?

I'm getting bored of people pretending that the spin is either convincing or difficult to counter.

If Tenet was such an incompetent boob,why did G W stick with hims for so long?

This isn't a pop at you. It's just so transparent and needs challenging. Which ever way this goes down, Bush fucked up for the bazillionth time.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

6. Its not convincing to US - that's not what worries me

its the other people - like the people in the cubicles next to me - that get their "news" spoon fed to them and the easier it is to digest the better. That's what's scary about this.

[H2O Man]

5. there are republican vultures

but I don't believe that their plan will work. This hurts the administration.

[Birthmark]

7. I believe that you are correct.

The public is going to see this as a Bush guy having to resign under fire. The Republican whine that Tenet was appointed by Clinton will be written off. They'll have to try harder than this if they want to convince the public that they're doing anything.

Order up! One Rumsfeld to go, plenty of sauce! :)

[H2O Man]

9. Exactly....

In his 1970 book, "We Talk, You Listen," Vine Deloria, Jr. wrote that, "There has never been a system yet that would not gladly sacrifice one of its own for a moment's peace, no matter how brief." (pg 66) This will not grant them even a moment's peace. It only raises more questions, and more attention, to several "problems" within the administration. Many people will connect it with the news of bush consulting an attorney. You never know....
More important for our side, it will create more acrimony between cheney/rumsfeld and the CIA. Certainly, and patriotic agent -- and I believe most fit that description -- must strongly resent the nasty outting of Wilson's wife .... and also the ugly treatment Tenet is now getting. I said a couple days ago, the CIA is not a good enemy for an administration to have. I predicted that DUers will have reason to celebrate on July 14. Get a bottle of good wine, etc, and be ready for a toast that evening.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

11. What's happening on Bastille day?

Am I ignorant?

[H2O Man]

12. No.

You certainly are not ignorant. I always enjoy reading your posts on here. I'm not sure what will happen. I spend a great deal of time praying for our society. I believe that you reap what you sow, and that at the middle of July, the investigation into the outting of Wilson's wife will expose cheney's office as being more criminal than was Agnew. I'm not asking anyone to accept my religious/spiritual belief system, but there is a great energy force -- and it includes all of the people who are working at all levels to bring about possitive change in America -- and this energy force will not be denied. On July 14, it will be clear that we are going to win in November. More, people will have a higher degree of understanding of the importance of continueing this effort to heal America and the world of the terible damage that bush has done.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

16. I do alot of praying myself and I think you're right

something good is coming and it ain't the rapture that Bush is praying for!

:)

[H2O Man]

17. Yep.

I had a friend over one evening a week ago, and we were discussing politics. My 10-year old daughter, who has a child's wonderful grasp of God-consciousness, asked if we thought bush knew that he had innocent blood on his hands? Fascinating question, really. I said that I think bush is convinced that he is God's agent, playing an important role on earth. But this is a dangerous way of thinking. As a result, he does "play a role" ..... but not at all the one he imagines.

His errors in thinking include the belief that it is okay to lie sometimes "for the good of the country." I think that he is a fundamental liar. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. told the truth. He recognized the extreme sacrifices that he had to make to live up to the role he accepted. King told the truth. The moral arch of the universe is long and wide, but it is real. We are going to reach the promised land that King actually saw.

When I was young, Onondaga Chief Paul Waterman taught me that divine intervention isn't what confused people like bush expect: divine intervention occures every day, in ways so hidden and yet so obvious that most people fail to focus on them. Yet today we see people's eyes are being opened. We have a great deal of hard work ahead of us, as MKL said. But we're getting there.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

18. You're talking about Grace

And grace goes unnoticed by those who are not at peace. Not Bush's peace ("when we're talking about war we're really talking about peace") but the true peace of spirit then the heart can be attentive to the grace that is there always working in our lives

/end sermon

:)

[Az]

8. The word from the Heritage Foundation

Is that Tenet was in the sites months ago (http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed041904c.cfm). This is the source for all the spinning to come. The Heritage foundation is the spide at the center of the web. They set the tone and direction which all the right wing talking points follow.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

10. According to that article Rumsfeld is the one in charge of intelligence

so by their own admission (implied of course, R wingers never admit anything outright) Rummy's the one who needs to go!

[Gin]

13. IMO... he suffers from the "go along to get along syndrome"....and we all

see where that got him.

If we, here at DU, could see the influence of the DOD and Cheney from the outside looking in.....you know He "KNEW' what he was dealing with...and the way he played the game was to go along with the * crowd.

He appears to have taken the path of least resistance...to his own detriment.

Why? remains the big question.

[indigobusiness]

14. OMG ...Check this out...Bush is wigging out----

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_4636.shtml

The President's abrupt dismissal of CIA Directory George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an example of how he works.

"Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide. "That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'that's it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now."

Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as "God's will."

[troublemaker]

20. More paranoia here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1717361

[theboss]

15. The truth is, Tenet WAS a failure

Paranoia makes bad politics. Everyone is trying to look at this through the looking-glass when it is very simple and straightfoward.

I don't see why this is so hard to understand. Tenet was a disaster as CIA chief.

Yet, Bush stuck with him year after year after.

Our approach to this should "It's about Goddamn Time!!!"

[Bridget Burke]

19. Specific examples of his failings, please?

Just asking for information.

[central scrutinizer]

22. here is one source

http://counterpunch.org/cornwell06042004.html

excerpt:

But 11 September was not the first world-shaking event in the making that Mr Tenet's team failed to detect. In May 1998, the CIA was caught off guard by India's surprise nuclear tests that sparked fears of holocaust on the sub-continent when Pakistan followed suit in a series of tit-for-tat explosions.

Mr Tenet ordered an outside investigation into that intelligence failure which pointed up flaws that are still being criticised in the context of Iraq - first and foremost the lack of "humint": in plain language, spies on the ground. By the time of the 11 September attacks, the agency had manifestly not learnt the lessons of the cold war and reformed itself to deal with the threat of stateless terrorists practising "assymetrical" warfare against the world's lone superpower.

He missed the warning signs of al-Qa'ida's attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and, when the Clinton administration chose to retaliate against targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, it was bad CIA intelligence that led to a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum to be bombed in the mistaken belief that it was a chemical weapons facility.

The following year, more faulty intelligence led to the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

[theboss]

23. Good Lord, where to begin?

Clinton should have fired him years ago. On his watch:

Pakistan and India tested nuclear weapons. The CIA had no idea they were close to having this technology.

We bombed the Chinese embassy in Kosovo because our maps were wrong. Tenet took the blame and fired some CIA employees.

Clinton ordered the bombing of a pharmaceutical company in the Sudan because the CIA said it was manufacturing weapons; it wasn't.

All the intelligence failures surrounding 9/11.

Stating that it would take five freaking years to fix the intelligence failures surrounding 9/11.

The intelligence failures around the embassy bombings in Saudi Arabia.

Calling the WMD case against Saddam a "slam dunk."

Failing to strike the "yellow cake" reference from the state of the Union.

Having no idea where Bin Laden and Shiek Omar are.

[tedzbear]

25. I'm glad he's gone.

He is a fuck up no matter how you look at it. Too bad, but it's true.

The problem is, Bush's replacement will be one of Rummy's boys.

[mzmolly]

24. Hmmm, 2 words come to mind here .... FALL and GUY.

:hi:

[WilliamPitt]

26. Yup