http://www.drudgereport.com/flash8.htm
CIA TENET: BUSH ADMIN USE OF HIS 'SLAM DUNK' COMMENT TO PUSH WAR WAS DISINGENUOUS, DISHONORABLE AND RUINED REPUTATION AND CAREER
Thu Apr 26 2007 14:11:35 ET
Ex-CIA Director George Tenet says the way the Bush administration has used his now famous "slam dunk" comment Ð which he admits saying in reference to making the public case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq Ð is both disingenuous and dishonorable. It also ruined his reputation and his career, he tells Scott Pelley in his first network television interview. The interview will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, April 29 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
The phrase "slam dunk" didn't refer to whether Saddam Hussein actually had WMDs, says Tenet; the CIA thought he did. He says he was talking about what information could be used to make that case when he uttered those words. "We can put a better case together for a public case. That's what I meant," explains Tenet.
Months later, when no WMDs were found in Iraq, someone leaked the story to Washington Post editor Bob Woodward, who then wrote about a Dec. 21, 2002 White House meeting in which the CIA director reportedly "rose up, threw his arms in the air [and said,] 'It's a slam dunk case.'" Tenet says it was a passing comment, made well after major decisions had already been made to mobilize the nation for war.
The leak effectively made him a scapegoat for the invasion and ended his career. "At the end of the day, the only thing you have... is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor and when you don't have that anymore, well, there you go," Tenet tells Pelley. He says he doesn't know who leaked it but says there were only a handful of people in the room. "It's the most de able thing that ever happened to me," Tenet says. "You don't do this. You don't throw somebody overboard just because it's a deflection. Is that honorable? It's not honorable to me," he says.
Tenet says to have the president base his entire decision to go to war on such a remark is unbelievable. "So a whole decision to go to war, when all of these other things have happened in the run-up to war? You make mobilization decisions, you've looked at war plans," says Tenet. "I'll never believe that what happened that day informed the president's view or belief of the legitimacy or the timing of this war. Never!"
Tenet says what bothers him most is that senior administration officials like Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continue using "slam dunk" as a talking point. "And the hardest part of all this has been just listening to this for almost three years, listening to the vice president go on "Meet the Press" on the fifth year [anniversary] of 9/11 and say, 'Well, George Tenet said slam dunk' as if he needed me to say 'slam dunk' to go to war with Iraq," he tells Pelley. "And you listen to that and they never let it go. I mean, I became campaign talk. I was a talking point. ÔLook at the idiot [who] told us and we decided to go to war.' Well, let's not be so disingenuous... Let's everybody just get up and tell the truth. Tell the American people what really happened," says Tenet.
Developing...
If anyone ever deserved to impeached and jailed it's , bush and condi-lies-alot.
And to think to this day bush continues to deflect responsibility for his bad decision that has made America less safe..
May God help Tenet becuase he is about to be attacked and villified by the Fox News-Whott-Yoni-xrayzebra types.. these fools are dead enders anyway..
Last edited by George Gervin's Afro; 04-26-2007 at 03:28 PM.
He sounds as nuanced as Bill Clinton and John Kerry...
Slam dunk to make a case for military action is the same as saying the underlying information for making the case is a slam dunk.
The prick should have been fired when Bush took office...one of Bush's worst mistakes is keeping the porno-browsing ' on staff.
still waiting for that rock solid evidence that we used to justify the war..to this day not one bit has been released. You would think Bush and company would lay everything out publicly so people would stop calling him a liar.. I wonder why he hasn't?
That's because you're an idiot that doesn't pay attention to what is being said.
That was an easy cut and paste.
Try reading the AUMF in Iraq from 2002 sometime. Then, sit down and browse all the speeches by President Bush from that period forward and tell me WMD's were the only justification given for military action in Iraq.
, Saddam Hussein has done enough by 1998 to justify a resumption of hostilities and his ouster.
Yoni, GGA would run and hide if you could showed him
a canister full of WMD that was in Iraq. He doesn't
want facts. Just wants to holler, in unison with boutons,
Bush Sux, Bush lies, Bush is the enemy. AQ are the
good guys, just misunderstood. Hussein really wasn't
that bad, he only killed those he had to. (or wanted to)
Why do they keep using the term "slam dunk"? Why did they listen to him say that as opposed to him saying "Terrorist are going to highjack planes".
It doesn't really matter because I have converted to the republican side. My biggest concern is making sure we can blame the left for everything and that at least 20% of america's dumbest will buy it.
"WMD's were the only justification"
They were the primary, final, overwhelming justification, which is why Powell took "mobile bio-labs as proof of WMD" to the UN to get the authorizing vote, while many people in the Exec knew the labs were extremely dubious, even bull .
Iraq was NO THREAT to the USA, absolutely,
nor in comparison with jihadi terrorism.
Iraq was a PNAC/AIE/neo- /Repug grab for oil.
Last edited by boutons_; 04-27-2007 at 05:28 AM.
No boutons haven't you heard? we found pre 1991 artillery s s that contained mus gas...I guess that's it..THE WMDS... Stupid people like me actually hold our president accountable for starting wars on false pretenses. I guess it would make our lives much easier to just shut up and blindly follow Bush like ray and Yoni..see it's easy to be them they are company people and they blame the left for everything. They are karl Rove's dream .. gullible and willing to defelct accountablity on cue.. Rememer Iraq was an iminent threat..
Stupid Liberals are so busy hating Bush and America they can't see the forest from the trees - where spreading freedoms, like freedom of speech to tell us to get the out, were building roads and schools, providing low-cost nationalized health care, subsidizing cheap oil, and handing out money to virtually any Iraqi who asks for it, no questions asked, no receipts needed. If this were San Francisco and not Iraq, Liberals would be Bush clones too!
Yeah, it's too bad he didn't get rid of the one principal who reminded him constantly of the threat of Al Qaeda when everyone else's priorities were star wars and Saddam.
Tell me Yoni, which national security principal turned out to be right when it came to identifying the most imminent threat to the US in 2001?
Rumsfeld?
Rice?
Cheney?
I really want to hear your answer here.
Yoni already stated that Tenet blamed his porn addiction on his son.. You probably ask yourself what in the that has to do with this book? I asked myself the same question. maybe Yoni can tie the two situations to gether for us.. he's REAL smart
Both Dumbya and Cheney should be impeached. Lying SOB's that they are.
Bush couldn't slam dunk if he was standing on a 9 foot ladder.
Last edited by rascal; 04-27-2007 at 11:42 AM.
He wouldn't use a ladder. He'd use a cherry picker!!!!!
George Tenet's Book Absolves George Tenet
The long, slow roll-out of George Tenet’s self-serving, Cheney-trashing book/60 Minutes appearance continues with the requisite Times advance copy-based front page story.
The critics say:
* “A devastating judgment!” — New York Times
* “Bitter!” — New York Times
* “Accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical!” — New York Times
Oh, here are the shocking revelations from the book: Bush is genial and well-intentioned, torture and extraordinary rendition are totally justified, Colin Powell is a nice guy, the “slam dunk” line was totally out of context, Cheney is a , Paul Wolfowitz is a , Doug Feith is the dumbest ing guy on the planet, Condoleezza Rice is a , he really had to think long and hard about accepting that medal, and Stephen Hadley is a .
http://wonkette.com/politics/tenet-rights-dept'/george-tenets-book-absolves-george-tenet-255857.php
There's alot of in there. We should wait for whottts verbal description before passing judgement.
Tenet=CYA. It's not my fault, right mikey?
Bush's days are numbered.
C-r-e-d-i-b-i-l-i-t-y.
635, to be precise.
dubya is already a lame duck. He can't initiate any more between now and spring of 07, when the Congress will be pre-occupied with the Nov 07 campaigns.
What you see so far from dubya and head is all you're gonna get. incompetence, ed up govt, wanton politicization of non-political Exec functions, Katrina, 100s of gieveous lies on all subjects, two wars lost, decreased national security, geo-political disaster, alienated allies, 10s of 100s of dead and maimed US military, and tax cuts and protections and subsidies for the super-rich and corps.
-- "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US"
-- "Bin Laden planning multiple operations."
-- "Bin Laden public profile may presage attack."
-- "Bin Laden network's plans advancing."
-- "Bin Laden threats are real."
-- "Bin Laden planning high profile attacks."
Last edited by ChumpDumper; 04-27-2007 at 06:57 PM.
Slam Dunk?
=============
April 28, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
More Like an Air Ball
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
Poor Slam Dunk.
Not since Madame Butterfly has anyone been so cruelly misunderstood and misused. Slam Dunk says that when he pantingly told the president that fetching information on Saddam’s W.M.D. would be a cinch, he did not mean let’s go to war.
No matter how eager Slam Dunk was to tell W. what he wanted to hear while polishing the president’s shoes, the intelligence they craved did not exist. “Let me say it again: C.I.A. found absolutely no linkage between Saddam and 9/11,” the ex-Head Spook writes in his new book, self-effacingly led “At the Center of the Storm.” Besides, Junior and Darth had already decided to go to war to show the Arabs their moxie.
The president and vice president wanted Slam Dunk to help them dramatize the phony case. Everyone had to pitch in! That Saturday session in December 2002 in the Oval Office was “essentially a marketing meeting,” Slam Dunk writes, just for “sharpening the arguments.”
Hey, I feel better.
Slam Dunk always presented himself as the ultimate guy’s guy, a cigar-chomping spymaster who swapped jokes with the president. But now he shows us his tender side, a sniveling C.I.A. chief bullied by “remote” Condi.
He says Condi panicked in October 2002 and made him call a Times reporter, Alison Mitc , who covered the Congressional debate about invading Iraq. In essence, he hypocritically told Alison to disregard the conclusions of his own agency, which had said that the links between Saddam and terrorist groups were tenuous, and that Saddam would take the extreme step of joining with Islamic fanatics only if he thought the U.S. was about to attack him. His nose growing as long as his cigar, he said nothing in the C.I.A. report contradicted the president’s case for war.
“In retrospect,” Slam writes, “I shouldn’t have talked to the New York Times reporter at Condi’s request. By making public comments in the middle of a contentious political debate, I gave the impression that I was becoming a partisan player.”
Can’t a guy be a lickspittle without being an ideologue?
There were so many nasties trying to push Slam around: Vice, of course, and Wolfie, and Wolfie’s neoconcubine Doug Feith. Once, Slam writes, Wolfie “hounded” a C.I.A. briefer to translate the diary of Abu Zubaydah, a captured Al Qaeda official, even though the C.I.A. had decided it was just misogynistic ramblings “about what he wanted to do with women.” Oh, that sexy beast Wolfie. Look out, Shaha!
But even though he was paid a $4 million advance to settle scores, Slam can’t turn on W. Maybe it’s the Medal of Freedom.“In a way, President Bush and I are much alike,” he writes. “We sometimes say things from our gut, whether it’s his ‘bring ’em on’ or my ‘slam dunk.’ I think he gets that about me, just as I get that about him.” (He had me at “slam dunk.”)
( so even after dubya blamed no WMD on "bad (Tenet) intelligence", Tenet still remains a loyal bushie )
The worst meanie was horrid Bob Woodward. Slam socialized with Bob and gave him lots of intel for his best sellers, but then Bob “painted a caricature of me leaping into the air and simulating a slam dunk, not once but twice, with my arms flailing. Credit Woodward’s source with ... a fine sense of how to make me look ridiculous, but don’t credit him or her with a deep sense of obligation to the truth.”
A deep sense of obligation to the truth is something Slam keenly understands, even though he scurried around like the butler in “Remains of the Day,” trying to toadie up to the president while, as he belatedly admits, W. was going to invade Iraq without debate or a casus belli.
He says the C.I.A. warned Paul Bremer that demobilizing the Iraqi Army would be “madness.”
The two worst intelligence disasters in our history happened on his watch, but Slam says he was Cassandra. He says he gave intel to guys who wanted to ignore or warp it and make bad policy. What could he do?
A C.I.A. paper was given to the president’s national security team in September 2002 to sum up the possible negatives of invading Iraq, including anarchy and a breakup of Iraq, instability in the neighborhood, a surge of terrorism against U.S. interests, oil disruptions, and seething allies.
But it was discreetly tucked away in the back of the briefing book, after the stuff at the beginning about how great it would be to liberate Iraq and end threats to Iraq’s neighbors, and the stuff in the middle about reforming Iraq’s bureaucracy.
Slam gives tips to others who want to engage in public service, including: Don’t forget that there are no private conversations, even in the Oval Office. Another might be: If you worry about your own survival more than your country’s, you might end up as the whiny fall guy.
Well, if we're going to start listening to George Tenet now, let's see what all he has to say...
If he has no credibility on Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda, then, you've got to wonder if anything he says is true, eh?GEORGE TENET'S JUST released book, At the Center of the Storm, has created quite a stir. Over the past few days, a myriad of news accounts have referenced various snippets of the former director of Central Intelligence's self-serving collection of remembrances. But here is something you probably have not heard or read about Tenet's book: it confirms that there was a relationship between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. And, according to Tenet, "there was more than enough evidence to give us real concern" about it too.
Tenet devotes an entire chapter to the question of Iraq's ties to al Qaeda (Chapter 18, "No Authority, Direction, or Control"). Much of the chapter is used to vilify Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense, and Vice President Cheney. Tenet claims, repeatedly, that Feith, Cheney, and others in the Bush administration exaggerated the intelligence on Saddam's ties to al Qaeda. The former DCI says they "pushed the data farther than it deserved" and "sought to create a connection between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks that would have made WMD, the United Nations, and the international community absolutely irrelevant." (In this vein, Tenet also erroneously claimed to have met Richard Perle on September 12, 2001. According to Tenet, Perle said "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday [September 11]." However, Perle was in France and, therefore, could not have met with Tenet. Perle denies the conversation took place at all.)
Tenet offers little real evidence to support his contention. But
it is worth noting what he does not claim: that the Bush administration cooked up the connection between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda in its entirety. In fact, Tenet concedes that there was evidence of a worrisome relationship. For example, Tenet explains that in late 2002 and early 2003:
On Ansar al-Islam, Zarqawi, and Kurmal, Tenet elaborates further:
According to Tenet, al Qaeda's presence was not limited to northern Iraq:
Other high-level al Qaeda terrorists set up shop in Baghdad as well. From Saddam's neo-Stalinist capital they planned attacks around the globe:
It strains credulity to imagine that all of this was going on without, at the very least, Saddam's tacit approval. Tenet says that the CIA did not think Saddam had "operational direction and control" over
the two Egyptians, Zarqawi, or AI. But he explains, "from an intelligence point of view it would have been difficult to conclude that the Iraqi intelligence service was not aware of their activities." "Certainly," Tenet adds, "we believe that at least one senior AI operative maintained some sort of liaison relationship with the Iraqis."
There was more. Tenet says that his analysts found evidence of a relationship spanning more than a decade. He explains:
As has been discussed in THE WEEKLY STANDARD on a number of occasions, the CIA also uncovered evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda were cooperating on chemical weapons projects in the Sudan. The Clinton administration cited the CIA's intelligence to justify the August 20, 1998, strike on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory. That strike was launched in retaliation for al Qaeda's August 7, 1998, embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The al-Shifa plant operated under an Iraqi oil-for-food contract and Tenet's CIA suspected it of being one of several front companies at which Iraq was transferring chemical weapons technology (including VX nerve gas) to al Qaeda.
Tenet explains the long history of collaboration between Iraq, Sudan, and al Qaeda:
Tenet also offers his thoughts on the detention of Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, "a senior military trainer for al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan." When al-Libi was first detained he "offered up information that a militant known as Abu Abudullah had told him that at least three times between 1997 and 2000, the now-deceased al-Qa'ida leader Mohammed Atef had sent Abu Abdullah to Iraq to seek training in poisons and mus gas." Later, al-Libi recanted his testimony. Controversy then ensued. Critics of the Iraq war have seized on al-Libi's reversal and claim that his admissions were made under duress, and are therefore dubious.
But Tenet says "there was sharp division on his recantation" inside the CIA. Al-Libi "clearly lied," Tenet says, but we don't know when. Either his initial confession or his later denial could be accurate. Tenet concludes: "The fact is, we don't know which story is true, and since we don't know, we can assume nothing."
But Tenet adds an additional detail that he says lent credence to al-Libi's initial confession: "Another senior al-Qa'ida detainee told us that Mohammed Atef was interested in expanding al-Qa'ida's ties to Iraq, which, in our eyes, added credibility to [al-Libi's initial] reporting."
Some will no doubt highlight Tenet's claims about the Bush administration hyping Saddam's ties to 9/11. In reality, he provides little verifiable evidence to back up this claim. As Tenet's chapter le suggests, he also believes that Saddam's Iraq lacked "authority, direction, or control" over al Qaeda. Few would argue with this assessment. But that does not make the threads of evidence connecting Saddam's regime to al Qaeda any less troublesome.
Zarqawi, AI, chemical weapons projects, high-level contacts, Egyptian al Qaeda members plotting from Baghdad: it adds up to a very alarming picture.
And after reading all of Tenet's chapter on Iraq and al Qaeda, it seems clear that neoconservatives weren't the only ones connecting the dots between these two enemies of the United States.
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