Tenet knows better than any that the UN records themselves pointed out unnaccounted for biological and chemical weapons material and delivery systems and a host of other issues and that there was no reason to believe Saddam had given up on such weapons or military aggression. Those very same UN records were the base on which one could possibly convince the UN Security Council to take military action, nothing else would pass muster and thus it became the central issue in the UN.

Tenet also knows that Saddam still had subordinates with the appropriate knowledge base (and even past experience) in manufacturing such weapons. In some ways that’s even more important as it combined with dual use equipment (which Saddam had - at least some of it has been found) as well as the motivation (something no-one doubts Saddam had) will eventually result in having the weapons ready for use.

Most people realize that once you’ve done something difficult once then it will be easier the next time. Add to that a demonstrated will to use it and scale it up and you get a clone of the North Korea situation in the middle of a region already filled with active conflict. In such a situation the UN attempts at inspections only serves as a kind of evolutionary pressure rather than a deterrent and has no hope of success.

Unless Tenet was/is grossly incompetent he would be well aware of all of these things and should simply just explain it and the plethora of other valid reasons but instead he makes stuff up. He’ll join the questionable company of Hans Blix; another person who did a 180 and started to contradict just about every past statement he had made.

I have to wonder, what ever happened to character? Perhaps it’s symptomatic of a greater problem in our times. I don’t remember Neville Chamberlain trying to explain away his error in the judgment of the nature of the Nazi regime.

Please either view this video and then justify your implication or risk seeming painfully uninformed to the readers of this blog:

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2007/04/durbins-dishonesty-deconstructed.html

I do however think that he ignored the evidence which was contrary to his administrations goals of regime change.

From CNN - April 23, 2007.
“Tyler Drumheller, the former highest-ranking CIA officer in Europe, told “60 Minutes” that the administration “chose to ignore” good intelligence, the network said in a posting on its Web site.

Drumheller said that, before the U.S.-led attack on Iraq in 2003, the White House “ignored crucial information” from Iraq’s foreign minister, Naji Sabri, that indicated Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

Drumheller said that, when then-CIA Director George Tenet told President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other high-ranking officials that Sabri was providing information, his comments were met with excitement that proved short-lived.

“[The source] told us that there were no active weapons of mass destruction programs,” Drumheller is quoted as saying. “The [White House] group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested. And we said ‘Well, what about the intel?’ And they said ‘Well, this isn’t about intel anymore. This is about regime change.’ ”

The march toward war was so compelling that the MSM didn’t even bother to check facts.
The only organization that did bother to call Army and CIA officials to verify the sources were the reporters with the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C.
They found that those very sources that the White House used were spurious, inconsistent at best.

Who knows if Bush lied, God maybe? But the facts are lining up to an acute proclivity towards something more than carelessness on the part of the Bush Administration.
The White House intentionally excluded critical information pertaining the to a lack of WMD’s in Iraq and this same information filtered downward to Congress and the press.

So, I don’t think that lying is the correct term here. What we’re dealing with is an intentional exclusion of contrary facts.

Is that technically lying?

Also, I wonder: if Tenet had been cheerleading for the administration, rather than criticizing it, but still performed the tic, would you have still concluded that he is mentally ill?

Wasn’t it the CIA that prepared the Presidential Daily Breifing, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”?

Checking your links, people seem to be trying to discredit the entire book (which none of us have read) based on:

1. Mis-representing the title of someone.
2. Not getting a date right on a discussion with Perle, but not the content of the discussion. Perle was quoted by CNN saying essentially the same thing on Sept 16, just four days later.
3. Not doing something about bin laden sooner (”clinton’s fault”
4. The Niger thing again, in which McCarthy states: “Indeed, the best intelligence assessment from both U.S. and British agencies, after comprehensive investigations in both countries, indicates that Saddam almost certainly did try to acquire uranium from Niger.”

On the other hand, Gonzales just said “I don’t recall” 55 times about stuff that happened much more recently and Bush said he was proud of him.

As if he had any clue about what the intelligence really was!

I’m not a psychiatrist, but I play one on the internet.

In reply to your query as to what it’s like: It’s a hoot!

On a slightly more serious note, the man came across as extremely agitated and defensive in both word and gesture. Plus, I am not afraid to rely on my “gut” feelings to try to interpret environmental clues. It’s a survival thing.

As if he had any clue about what the intelligence really was!

Can’t find that part in this article about the interview. Tenet says he really believed there were WMD.

“”Well, as you know, hindsight is perfect. The public face on this what we wrote on weapons of mass destruction and for professionals, who pride themselves on being right, this is a very painful experience for us,” Tenet acknowledges. “

Yes, Tenet continues to assert (as do most intelligence analysts) that his (and their) belief was that Saddam possessed WMD. My complaint about the “interview” was that Pelley continued to assert that everybody knew prior to the invasion of Iraq that no WMD existed…which is patently false—and ridiculously poor “journalism”.

But it’s par for the course for “journalists” today to carry their own biases and preconceptions into an “interview”.

Just so everybody’s clear—I think Tenet is an incompetent idiot…but so is Scott Pelley.

Content of these bunkers is probably now in Syria, smuggled here with help of Russian spetznaz.

Re McCarthy’s assertion about Niger and Yellocake, the most definitive assessment I can come up with states this:

“Conclusion 3: Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessment that Iraq was “vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake” from Africa. Postwar findings support the assessment in the NIE of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) that claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are “highly dubious.”

The ISG found no evidence that indicated Iraq sought uranium from Africa. The ISG did recover evidence that Iraq explicitly turned down an offer to purchase uranium from the Democratic Republic of the Congo…”

from Postwar Findings on Iraq’s WMD Programs…etc Sept 8 2006

To have been wrong about the former means we’re in the mess we’re in today. To have been wrong about the latter would have been far, far, worse.

Besides, if Sadaam had WMD’s, I have a feeling that the debate today would be the same, only the left wouldn’t be saying “Bush lied” as much (although some on the far left would have alleged that we planted any weapons we found).

I can hear it now: We did our job and got Sadaam’s WMD’s, but now our troops are caught in a civil war and we need to get out and what we’re doing now has nothing to do with the war on terror, etc., etc., etc.,

That will often be the case, and the key is to analyze the data correctly, without pre-judging it.

Spend a little time with a href= http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf >this document, (”Postwar Findings about Iraq’s WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments”) and read all the instances of “evidence was overstated” or “based not on intelligence but layers of analysis from a single source,” “even more alarmist” “less nuanced,” etc.

Which also means, Jake, your BDS wet dream notwithstanding, you’ll see neither impeachment nor war crimes trials. We’ll have another election in 2008 (but shh! you never know when the theocrat Pretzeldent BusHitler might institute martial law!), another mediocrity in the WH and screeches from one or another side of the partisan aisle.

I will say, though, watching this blubbering fool Tenet reminds me that JFK had three good ideas in his life:

1. Put a man on the moon.
2. Sleep with Marilyn Monroe.
3. Break the CIA and scatter it to the wind.

Pity he didn’t do no. 3 first. And why GWB gave a medal to this lumbering nitwitted jackanape escapes me. Tenet should have been out the door on 9/12 and started the morning of 9/13 asking “you want fries with that?”

To me, however, the strongest evidence that Sadaam had them was his own behavior. His cat-and-mouse games in the 1990’s were not the bahavior of one who had disarmed.

We made a judgement call, but there were only two ways to know for sure that Sadaam did not have WMD’s–either Sadaam’s full cooperation (like Ukraine and South Africa, or Libya after we invaded Iraq), or invasion. Had we not invaded, we would still not know.

Sadaam used WMD’s before and broke the agreement of the cease fire by interfering with inspections. That alone was cause enough to revoke the cease fire.

Question: If I get the security code wrong, and this is a pretty tough one, the comment I wrote goes away.
Is that supposed to happen?
Why can’t I just try the next code?

You try the backbutton switch when it says security code is wrong?

If you are talking about a comment you wrote that disappeared without an error message, than that’s her spam filter working to block a word.

Oh, well, I’ll try to dredge up last night’s flaming inspiration:

The west allowed the sanctions to degenerate into a game of hide and seek. It was Saddaam against the inspectors and, if he won one, wasn’t he clever. The UN requirement, originally anyway, was that the entire thing be easy, with everything the inspectors wanted supplied them with no quibbles.
Saddaam’s actions were of somebody who had something to hide. Or who wanted to hint that he had something to hide. Sure fooled us.