Posted on 04/26/2007 4:44:48 PM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
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 despicable 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 Dick 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...
And he was DCI on 9/11...
Exactly. There's no doubt in my mind that Tenet knew about 911 before it happened. But no one could believe such a horror. That's because normal people cannot imagine the evil in the hearts of the Clintonoids and now like a malicious disease has infected all of the Demonrats and some Repubs as well.
I agree. Clean house including the US Attorneys.
NRO - April 2004:
Rumsfeld’s War, Powell’s Occupation (April, 2004 NRO article)
National Review Online ^ | April 30, 2004 | Barbara Lerner
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1616782/posts
Rumsfeld wanted Iraqis in on the action right from the beginning.
The latest post-hoc conventional wisdom on Iraq is that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld won the war but lost the occupation. There are two problems with this analysis (which comes, most forcefully, from The Weekly Standard). First, it’s not Rumsfeld’s occupation; it’s Colin Powell’s and George Tenet’s. Second, although it’s painfully obvious that much is wrong with this occupation, it’s simple-minded to assume that more troops will fix it. More troops may be needed now, but more of the same will not do the job. Something different is needed and was, right from the start.
A Rumsfeld occupation would have been different, and still might be. Rumsfeld wanted to put an Iraqi face on everything at the outset not just on the occupation of Iraq, but on its liberation too. That would have made a world of difference.
Rumsfeld’s plan was to train and equip and then transport to Iraq some 10,000 Shia and Sunni freedom fighters led by Shia exile leader Ahmed Chalabi and his cohorts in the INC, the multi-ethnic anti-Saddam coalition he created. There, they would have joined with thousands of experienced Kurdish freedom fighters, ably led, politically and militarily, by Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani. Working with our special forces, this trio would have sprung into action at the start of the war, striking from the north, helping to drive Baathist thugs from power, and joining Coalition forces in the liberation of Baghdad. That would have put a proud, victorious, multi-ethnic Iraqi face on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and it would have given enormous prestige to three stubbornly independent and unashamedly pro-American Iraqi freedom fighters: Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani.
Jay Garner, the retired American general Rumsfeld chose to head the civilian administration of the new Iraq, planned to capitalize on that prestige immediately by appointing all three, along with six others, to head up Iraq’s new transitional government. He planned to cede power to them in a matter of weeks not months or years and was confident that they would work with him, not against him, because two of them already had. General Garner, after all, is the man who headed the successful humanitarian rescue mission that saved the Kurds in the disastrous aftermath of Gulf War I, after the State Department-CIA crowd and like thinkers in the first Bush administration betrayed them. Kurds are not a small minority and they remember. The hero’s welcome they gave General Garner when he returned to Iraq last April made that crystal clear.
Finally, Secretary Rumsfeld wanted to cut way down on the infiltration of Syrian and Iranian agents and their foreign terrorist recruits, not just by trying to catch them at the border a losing game, given the length of those borders but by pursuing them across the border into Syria to strike hard at both the terrorists and their Syrian sponsors, a move that would have forced Iran as well as Syria to reconsider the price of trying to sabotage the reconstruction of Iraq.
None of this happened, however, because State and CIA fought against Rumsfeld’s plans every step of the way. Instead of bringing a liberating Shia and Sunni force of 10,000 to Iraq, the Pentagon was only allowed to fly in a few hundred INC men. General Garner was unceremoniously dumped after only three weeks on the job, and permission for our military to pursue infiltrators across the border into Syria was denied.
General Garner was replaced by L. Paul Bremer, a State Department man who kept most of the power in his own hands and diluted what little power Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani had by appointing not six but 22 other Iraqis to share power with them. This resulted in a rapidly rotating 25-man queen-for-a-day-type leadership that turned the Iraqi Governing Council into a faceless mass, leaving Bremer’s face as the only one most Iraqis saw.
By including fence-sitters and hostile elements as well as American friends in his big, unwieldy IGC and giving them all equal weight, Bremer hoped to display a kind of inclusive, above-it-all neutrality that would win over hostile segments of Iraqi society and convince them that a fully representative Iraqi democracy would emerge. But Iraqis didn’t see it that way. Many saw a foreign occupation of potentially endless length, led by the sort of Americans who can’t be trusted to back up their friends or punish their enemies. Iraqis saw, too, that Syria and Iran had no and were busily entrenching their agents and terrorist recruits into Iraqi society to organize, fund, and equip Sunni bitter-enders like those now terrorizing Fallujah and Shiite thugs like Moqtada al Sadr, the man who is holding hostage the holy city of Najaf.
Despite all the crippling disadvantages it labored under, Bremer’s IGC managed to do some genuine good by writing a worthy constitution, but the inability of this group to govern-period, let alone in time for the promised June 30 handover finally became so clear that Bremer and his backers at State and the CIA were forced to recognize it. Their last minute “solution” is to dump the Governing Council altogether, and give U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, the power to appoint a new interim government. The hope is that U.N. sponsorship will do two big things: 1) give the Brahimi government greater legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people; and 2) convince former allies to join us and reinforce our troops in Iraq in some significant way. These are vain hopes.
Putting a U.N. stamp on an Iraqi government will delegitimize it in the eyes of most Iraqis and do great damage to those who are actively striving to create a freer, more progressive Middle East. Iraqis may distrust us, but they have good reason to despise the U.N., and they do. For 30 years, the U.N. ignored their torments and embraced their tormentor, focusing obsessively on a handful of Palestinians instead. Then, when Saddam’s misrule reduced them to begging for food and medicine, they saw U.N. fat cats rip off the Oil-for-Food Program money that was supposed to save them.
The U.N. as a whole is bad; Lakhdar Brahimi is worse. A long-time Algerian and Arab League diplomat, he is the very embodiment of all the destructive old policies foisted on the U.N. by unreformed Arab tyrants, and he lost no time in making that plain. In his first press conferences, he emphasized three points: Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani will have no place in a government he appoints; he will condemn American military action to restore order in Iraq; and he will be an energetic promoter of the old Arab excuses Israel’s “poison in the region,” he announced, is the reason it’s so hard to create a viable Iraqi interim government.
Men like Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani have nothing but contempt for Mr. Brahimi, the U.N., and old Europe. They know perfectly well who their real enemies are, and they understand that only decisive military action against them can create the kind of order that is a necessary precondition for freedom and democracy. They see, as our State Department Arabists do not, that we will never be loved, in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East, until we are respected, and that the month we have wasted negotiating with the butchers of Fallujah has earned us only contempt, frightening our friends and encouraging our mortal enemies.
The damage Brahimi will do to the hope of a new day in Iraq and in the Middle East is so profound that it would not be worth it even if empowering him would bring in a division of French troops to reinforce ours in Iraq. In fact, it will do no such thing. Behind all the bluster and moral preening, the plain truth is that the French have starved their military to feed their bloated, top-heavy welfare state for decades. They couldn’t send a division like the one the Brits sent, even if they wanted to (they don’t). Belgium doesn’t want to help us either, nor Spain, nor Russia, because these countries are not interested in fighting to create a new Middle East. They’re fighting to make the most advantageous deals they can with the old Middle East, seeking to gain advantages at our expense, and at the expense of the oppressed in Iraq, Iran, and every other Middle Eastern country where people are struggling to throw off the shackles of Islamofascist oppression.
It is not yet too late for us to recognize these facts and act on them by dismissing Brahimi, putting Secretary Rumsfeld and our Iraqi friends fully in charge at last, and unleashing our Marines to make an example of Fallujah. And when al Jazeera screams “massacre,” instead of cringing and apologizing, we need to stand tall and proud and tell the world: Lynch mobs like the one that slaughtered four Americans will not be tolerated. Order will restored, and Iraqis who side with us will be protected and rewarded.
Barbara Lerner is a frequent contributor to NRO.
7 posted on 11/02/2006 9:10:53 AM EST by Matchett-PI (To have no voice in the Party that always sides with America’s enemies is a badge of honor.)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1730632/posts?page=7#7
Rumsfeld’s Prophecy Has Come True
By Cal Thomas October 26, 2006
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/10/rumsfelds_prophecy_has_come_tr.html
At lunch Monday with a small group of columnists, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld handed us a speech he’d delivered in 1984 on the occasion of his receiving the George Catlett Marshall Medal.
It was Oct. 17, three weeks before a critical election that would give Ronald Reagan an overwhelming electoral victory. It was also a time when voices in the media and Democratic Party were calling for the United States not to introduce Pershing II missiles into Western Europe to counter missiles the Soviet Union had placed in Eastern Europe. The left wanted an accommodation with Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan believed in victory over communism, and the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the liberation of the Soviet bloc nations is testimony to his sound judgment.
Even before those exciting events, Rumsfeld saw another threat coming in as the tide of Soviet communism rolled out. He spoke of terrorism. Remember, this was 1984, 17 years before 9/11 at a time when most of the world thought terrorism was an isolated phenomenon confined mainly to Israel.
“Terrorism is growing,” Rumsfeld said then. “In the 30 days ending last week, it is estimated that there were 37 terrorist attacks, by 13 different organizations, against the property or citizens of 20 different countries.”
Even then, Rumsfeld noted terrorism is “state-sponsored, by nations using it as a central element of their foreign policy... terrorism has a home.”
He said terrorism works because even a single attack by a small and weak nation can influence public opinion and lower morale and can “alter the behavior of great nations.” Isn’t that precisely what is happening now? As the terrorists watch the American electorate grow tired and frustrated with the war against insurgent terrorists in Iraq, do they not think all they have to do is hold out a little longer and America will sign anything and do anything to preserve the lives of its people? Why should they believe anything else?
Using a justification for fighting terrorism that would resurface in the current war, Rumsfeld said, “Terrorism is a form of warfare and must be treated as such... weakness invites aggression. Simply standing in a defensive position, absorbing blows, is not enough. Terrorism must be deterred.”
In his 1984 speech, Rumsfeld said terrorism cannot be eliminated, but it can be made to function at a “low level” that will allow governments to function. He repeated that thought at lunch and added that the United States is somewhat at a disadvantage because the terrorists don’t have a media that challenges their policies, they have no hierarchy and they “get to lie every day with no accountability.” Speculating again about the future, Rumsfeld said, “there will be no conventional wars in the near future and no way the military can win or lose a war.”
I asked him what he meant. He replied, “We’re socialized into believing the American military can go find somebody and kick the hell out of them, or find a battleship to sink, or an air force to shoot down. You can’t do that in the 21st century.”
Noting the length of the Cold War, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - who was also at the luncheon - agreed the terrorists can be deterred “if the American people will just give us the time.”
Later that day, I spoke with Haley Barbour, Mississippi governor and former Republican National Committee chairman, about the apparently slim GOP prospects in the coming election. Noting how the polls show Iraq has hurt Republicans, Barbour said, “The public gets tired of long wars.”
That is precisely what Osama bin Laden and his bloody associates are counting on. Their plan for victory is to exhaust the United States.
In 1984, Rumsfeld recalled Winston Churchill’s lesson from World War II that weakness invites aggression. And he warned, “Ours is a dangerous world, a world in transition.”
We have now transitioned from dangerous to even more dangerous. If we grow weary in this battle, we can be sure our enemies won’t flag. They are prepared for a long war. We’d better be, for to be unprepared and to lack resolve means the war will come anyway, but with greater intensity and with more American (and European) casualties.
8 posted on 11/02/2006 10:02:36 AM EST by Matchett-PI (To have no voice in the Party that always sides with America’s enemies is a badge of honor.)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1730632/posts?page=8#8
bttt
Yep, should of been replaced as soon as Bush took office. I’ve been saying that for a long time.
I agree but after the fact. They should have partnered with Tenet and worked with him to clean out the underlings that were the real problem. A sizable percentage of individuals in the security services should have been fired out right for their anti-American sentiments alone. It didn’t help at all getting rid of him and it led to them making the false statement that no WMDs were found. They may have not found the prepared and ready to launch missiles filled with VX but they did find tons of duel use chemicals in camouflaged bunkers. They did find 1.8 metric tons of Yellow cake. They did find the missile systems and evidence of an attempt to buy long range missiles from North Korea.
Tenet would’ve been a much better ally than an enemy. Clinton appointee or not. The White just wasn’t smart in how they dealt with what they did find. They left Kay to muddle around in Iraq with the ISG when they should have had a special team that knew how to put the pieces and parts together not someone who seemed more intent on debunking the whole effort. They kept expecting a big hit to whip out their critics so that whenever we did find 500 munitions with Chemical weapons the press quickly could brush it aside. The mobile bio-weapons labs were real just cleaned well. Over and over again the Bush admin has allowed the evidence to be disregarded and eventually came to support the media lie. It is their fault and they should be ashamed.
Threw him overboard?? You can't be serious. GWB stuck with Tenet much longer then any in coming President would have. Furthermore Dir Tenet said exactly what he said. The CIA thought it was a slam dunk that WMDs (fully produced) would be found. This hyperbole BS about "what he really meant is so non-serious it is laughable".
Dir Tenet is showing himself for who he really is here by writing such garbage....and knowing full well how the words he says will be spun (by the MSM/left).
Disgusting of the man. Especially at the current time.
Hard to have much sympathy for W. on this one. You cannot have a Rat in charge of the CIA — unless, perhaps, it’s a Rat with a long record of disloyalty to the Rat party. You certainly shouldn’t keep a Clinton appointee on board. Another example of Bush’s nice-guy bipartisanship biting him in the rear.
You have it exactly right.
What the heck is his point, “I used the term but he had no business taking me at my word?” What a Putz.
I am a little confused. Nothing new there, ha ha. But I thought we first heard about the slam dunk from Bob Woodward’s book. The media reviews of that sure made it sound as if Tenet was telling a skeptical president that the weapons were indeed there.
Some here on FR guessed that the only reason this SCUMBAG got a jig with 60 Minuets was because his book was a hit piece on W! We are hardly ever wrong here on FR! I hate the mediaWHORES to the core!
He was a useful idiot. By uttering “It’s a slam dunk”, and being a Clintoon appointee, he gives Bush/Cheney a CIA get out of jail free card in the upcoming impeachment trials. By cooking the intel, Tenet is responsible for misleading the Congress and the nation, not Bush/Cheney.
It is Tenet who is being dishonorable here for trying to weasel out of the plain meaning of his words.
I guess he must want of few of the speaking gigs that would otherwise go to Joe Wilson. The same groups will now like both of them.
“Tenet says it was a passing comment, made well after major decisions had already been made to mobilize the nation for war.”
Why did he make the comment at all?
Give me a break. This man wants to make money.
How can this be “Developing” when it was on Tim Russert weeks ago.
Tenet is writing a Bash-Bush Book. He didn’t really mean “Slam Dunk”....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
That’s correct. See here:
Tenet: “Slam Dunk” Comment Misused
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1824315/posts?page=3
He did say it was a slam dunk and the President did stick with him for a time but the whole White has been in a slow retreat and they would never have suffered so badly if they’d have taken a position of strength and refused to capitulate to the media and the radical lefts line. They have a megaphone and they use it like a kid at a talent show for the first time.
This is the end of the last term and on almost every front they have allowed the enemies to not only get to the gate but to take control of the Senate and the House. They have called individuals Patriots who slander our troops and our country. They continue to not find an unkind word for their opponents while they are being beaten down with the exception of VP Cheney. I don’t understand it. President Bush is finally going to veto something thank God. I still support him I just think he and his people have been particularly bad about taking credit for the good that has been accomplished and in taking the offense. We now have a hugely distorted picture of Iraq that has taken hold and if they really give a damn they’d better start taking no prisoners politically.
They are. And they reveal that Tenet is far more interested in his "legacy" than in the facts.
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