Holy crap.
Look at the op-ed that Fred Hiatt published this morning:
How the CIA Failed America
By Richard N. Perle
George Tenet sets the stage in his memoir by recalling a conversation he claims to have had with me on Sept. 12, 2001: “As I walked beneath the awning that leads to the West Wing<, I> saw Richard Perle exiting the building just as I was about to enter. . . . Perle turned to me and said, ‘Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.’ I looked back at Perle and thought: Who has been meeting with in the White House so early in the morning on today of all days?”
But I was in Europe on Sept. 12, 2001, unable to get a return flight to Washington, and I did not tell Tenet that Iraq was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, not then, not ever. That should have been the end of the story: a faulty recollection, perhaps attributing to me something he may have heard elsewhere, an honest mistake.
So I was surprised when, having been made aware of his error, Tenet reasserted his claim, saying: “So I may have been off on the day, but I’m not off on what he said and what he believed.”
On “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Tenet argued that his version “seems to be corroborated” by a comment I made to columnist Robert D. Novak on Sept. 17 and a letter to President Bush that I signed, with 40 others, on Sept. 20. But my 10-word comment to Novak made no claim that Iraq was responsible for Sept. 11. Neither did the letter to the president, which said that “any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power.”
Shorter Richard Perle: Sure, I started pushing for Bush to lead us into a disastrous war just days after al-Qaeda attacked America, but not in the exact way George Tenet says I did.
Here’s the best part:
Understandably anxious to counter the myth that we went into Iraq on the basis of his agency’s faulty intelligence, Tenet seeks to substitute another myth: that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein resulted from the nefarious influence of the vice president and a cabal of neoconservative intellectuals.
Richard. Oh my God. You just acknowledged that you signed a letter urging Bush to take out Saddam
less than ten days after the 9/11 attacks occurred. You and your neocon buddies were clearly, obviously, and ridiculously obsessed with taking out Saddam for the purpose of…???? Hell, I still don’t know.
Here’s Perle to Novak in Februrary of 2001:
National security expert Richard Perle, an unofficial Bush adviser, flatly predicts that the Iraqi president will be gone within a year. That surely won’t be accomplished by military action that would require a minimum of 250,000 U.S. troops and guarantee the world’s disapproval. Nor is there any chance of repeating the prolonged bombing by the Western alliance that ultimately drove Slobodan Milosevic from power in Serbia. But Perle believes, along with key Bush administration figures, that a U.S.-financed opposition in Iraq can drive Saddam from power. No specialist familiar with Iraq agrees with that.
Of course they didn’t. The Big Lesson here is that Richard Perle is Always Wrong. Always, always, always.
Here’s another
Perle-to-Novak touchdown pass from August 2002 (my emphasis):
Doughty cold warrior Richard Perle, a hero of the victory over Soviet Russia, at the moment terrorists struck Sept. 11 laid out a strategy enjoying strong support in the Bush administration: the U.S., aligned with Israel against Islam and the Arab world, with the removal of Saddam Hussein even more important than pacifying Afghanistan.
Oopsie-doodles! Now why would Tenet ever conclude that poor li’l Richard Perle was obsessed with taking out Saddam, and would push for his ouster no matter what the evidence? Maybe because it was completely bloody obvious to everyone but Fred Hiatt?
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