Posted on 02/02/2004 12:47:51 PM PST by B-bone
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:19:22 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
February 2, 2004 -- POLITICS is the art of shifting blame. And that is exactly what's going on in Washington right now over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program-or the conspicuous absence thereof. Blame-shifting intensifies in election years. But far more important than fixing the blame: Fixing the problem.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Obviously, Bush wants Tenet in his current position or he would be gone. I do think that there needs to be accountability for intelligence lapses. Tenet may have been the best one for the job, but he needs to be replaced if only because it happened on his watch.
It's not necessarily fair, but that is how the world is.
http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/Comment/Jan04/index193.shtml
Short, precise, to the point-Simply Dubya should use that over and over.
Have to stop posting during non-break times.
Why? The way I see it, the fact that we haven't been the victim of a major terrorist strike since 9/11 is a huge compliment to the effectiveness of our intelligence. Someone is doing something right.
In Tenet's case, I think the loyalty the President feels for him stems back to 9/11. He walked in to its aftermath with a plan for toppling the Taliban with minimal US forces on the ground. It worked and I think the President feels he's earned some leeway.
As long as the inquiry doesn't compromise methods and sources, it would be a good thing. Let us hear what our leaders heard and decide if their judgment was sound.
Personally, I would never fault anyone for overestimating Saddam's capability. We had badly underestimated nuclear programs in India, Pakistan, Lybia and Saddam pre-GWI. To me it's human nature to project the worst case when dealing with someone like that.
I understand the analogy, but I think we ought to be careful applying it in the context of national security. In baseball, you may ditch the manager to generate/restore fan interest because you are in the entertainment business. Perception is almost as important as reality.
I don't think that's the case in national security. It would be the equivalent of saying Bush should ditch Tenet because it would help him in the polls.
It also might be counterproductive. If analysts think that they will get blasted for making incorrect predictions, even if based on sound evidence, they may become too cautious. The result may be some analyst becoming afraid to pass on warnings or predictions for fear of being wrong.
Anyway, I think the retention of Tenet should be judged based on how well he has performed in that role, not the perception of how he has performed.
www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htmRemarks to the United Nations Security Council
Secretary Colin L. Powell
New York City
February 5, 2003...
Last November 8, this Council passed Resolution 1441 by a unanimous vote. The purpose of that resolution was to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Iraq had already been found guilty of material breach of its obligations stretching back over 16 previous resolutions and 12 years.
Resolution 1441 was not dealing with an innocent party, but a regime this Council has repeatedly convicted over the years.
Resolution 1441 gave Iraq one last chance, one last chance to come into compliance or to face serious consequences. No Council member present and voting on that day had any illusions about the nature and intent of the resolution or what serious consequences meant if Iraq did not comply.
...
The material I will present to you comes from a variety of sources.
Some are U.S. sources and some are those of other countries.
Some are the sources are technical, such as intercepted telephone conversations and photos taken by satellites.
Other sources are people who have risked their lives to let the world know what Saddam Hussein is really up to.
Let me begin by playing a tape for you. What you're about to hear is a conversation that my government monitored. It takes place on November 26th of last year, on the day before United Nations teams resumed inspections in Iraq. The conversation involves two senior officers, a colonel and a brigadier general from Iraq's elite military unit, the Republican Guard.MORE of the transcript from the presentation before the UN:[The tape is played.] AUDIO
SECRETARY POWELL: Let me pause and review some of the key elements of this conversation that you just heard between these two officers.
First, they acknowledge that our colleague, Mohammed ElBaradei is coming, and they know what he's coming for and they know he's coming the next day. He's coming to look for things that are prohibited. He is expecting these gentlemen to cooperate with him and not hide things.
But they're worried. We have this modified vehicle. What do we say if one of them sees it? What is their concern? Their concern is that it's something they should not have, something that should not be seen.
The general was incredulous: "You didn't get it modified. You don't have one of those, do you?"
"I have one."
"Which? From where?"
"From the workshop. From the Al-Kindi Company."
"What?"
"I'll come to see you in the morning. I'm worried you all have something left."
"We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left."
Note what he says: "We evacuated everything." We didn't destroy it. We didn't line it up for inspection. We didn't turn it into the inspectors. We evacuated it to make sure it was not around when the inspectors showed up. "I will come to you tomorrow."
The Al-Kindi Company. This is a company that is well known to have been involved in prohibited weapons systems activity.
In the Situation Room: 'Flies on Their Eyeballs'
Earlier that morning, after his intelligence briefing from the CIA, Bush had met with the war cabinet in the White House Situation Room, one floor below the chief of staff's office in the southwest corner of the West Wing. Forty-eight hours after the attacks, Bush and his advisers began to focus more intently on how to go after Osama bin Laden, his al Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
CIA Director George J. Tenet and several other agency officials described in more detail the ideas Tenet had outlined the previous day. This was the second presentation in what became an increasingly detailed set of CIA proposals for expanding its war on terrorism. Tenet's concept called for bringing together expanded intelligence-gathering resources, covert action, sophisticated technology, agency paramilitary teams and opposition forces in Afghanistan. They would then be combined with U.S. military power and Special Forces into an elaborate and lethal package designed to destroy the shadowy terrorist networks.
The CIA director was a holdover from the Clinton administration, but he had emerged as a key member of Bush's team. A former congressional staffer, Tenet was unexpectedly tapped first as deputy director in 1995 and then as director of central intelligence in 1997 after the nomination of Anthony Lake, President Clinton's national security adviser, was held up by the Senate and Lake requested that his name be withdrawn. Tenet and Clinton had never really bonded; the former president preferred his daily briefing in writing. With Bush, who liked oral briefings and the CIA director in attendance, a strong relationship had developed. Tenet could be direct, even irreverent and earthy. In his presentation, Tenet said the United States could begin to go after bin Laden and the Taliban by invigorating the Northern Alliance, the primary opposition force in Afghanistan, where bin Laden was hiding and operating. The alliance's roughly 20,000 fighters were decidedly a mixed bag dominated by five factions, but in reality probably 25 sub-factions.It was a strained coalition of sometimes common interests, Tenet said. On top of that, its most charismatic leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, had been assassinated by two suicide bombers posing as journalists on Sept. 9, in what was believed to be an al Qaeda operation. Without Massoud, the Northern Alliance was more fractured and leaderless than ever.
But with the CIA teams and tons of money, the alliance could be brought together into a cohesive fighting force, Tenet said. The president and war cabinet members knew the CIA was giving very limited financial and technical covert support to the Northern Alliance – several million dollars a year – under a previous intelligence order. The agency's paramilitary teams had periodically met clandestinely with alliance leaders over the past four years. Tenet said he could insert paramilitary teams inside Afghanistan with each warlord. Along with Special Forces teams from the U.S. military, they would provide "eyes on the ground" for further U.S. military action. American technological superiority could give the Northern Alliance a significant edge.
The CIA had been on the ground in Afghanistan for years and had engaged in developing a more aggressive approach toward bin Laden and the Taliban prior to Sept. 11. The Pentagon, by contrast, had not been asked or encouraged to do any new planning as part of this pre-Sept. 11 process. As a result, Pentagon thinking about fighting bin Laden was far more conventional – to the frustration of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld – at a time when Bush was looking for the unconventional.
I believe this plan was on the President's desk on 9/10. We were not preemptive enough in the case of the Taliban.
The more I hear about Donald Rumsfeld the more I admire him as an individual, an executive, a leader and a warrior. September 2001 was way too early in his tenure to expect the corrosion of Clinton to have been scraped away.
The campaign to topple the Taliban could have been done by the previous administration but the Sink Emperor was too busy trying to stay popular. After Somalia he was afraid to do anything closer than cruise missile range.
Tenet appears to have been in the right place with a ready plan. Just as in Gulf War I General Schwarzkopf was able to demonstrate readiness because he had just run an exercise simulating Iraq invading Saudia Arabia.
I would love to see Tenet replaced. The Valeria Plame episode shows at least pockets of serious problems there. She sends her husband on a trip to drink tea. They "debrief" in Paris. He never writes a report but is somehow amazed the US government doesn't pivot policy around his "findings". She's donated money to the Al Gore campaign through a fake business set up for CIA use. It all stinks and I hope the inquiry into the leak exposes a lot of malfeasance that actually gets rectified.
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