Posted on 01/17/2005 6:56:33 AM PST by pissant
It isn't likely to be a rosy path for incoming US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as former CIA director George Tenet is likely to trash her achievements as the country's national security adviser in his memoir.
According to the Daily Mail, Tenet is of the categorical view that Rice was responsible for the terrorist strikes on the United States in September 2001, as she did not initiate enough protective steps to prevent those episodes.
"He (Tenet) claims she (Rice) was incompetent, that she didn't do her job" when it came to protecting the country from terrorists," the paper quotes a source as saying.
Tenet's book collaborator and former spokesman, Bill Harlow, denies that Tenet is putting the blame on Rice."The book proposal is confidential," says Harlow, the author of the military thriller "Circle William."
Tenet, who spent two weeks meeting with publishing-house editors, is also said to lay odds that Al Qaeda will strike next with a radioactive "dirty bomb."
"He says they're looking for a symbolic, high-value target - presumably in Washington or New York," says our source. "He says the terrorists' only difficulty is getting it into the country."
Robert Barnett, the lawyer who's shopping the proposal, also declined to discuss the book. But 12 houses are said to be vying for it. Bidding is said to have started at around a million dollars, though the word is that Tenet is hoping to get close to five million dollars. (ANI)
Lesson to us.....don't react to bull-oney printed in the media.
LOL! I'm scootchin'.
Tenet is writing a book? Gee, I distinctly remember he said he was leaving to spend more time with his family. I guess that was just one more inaccurate statement from the former DCI. Let's hope Goss keeps that broom sweeping hard.
Fact? Wishful thinking, perhaps even a plausible theory, but don't call it a fact. The trucks seen going to Syria could have just as easily contained Baathist officials and their personal loot.
And by refusing to acknowledge the very real possibility that those mobile trailers could very easily have been chem weapons labs.
The possibility wasn't very real. link.
Your link was to a NY Times Story on the subject. I prefer the Weekly World News for more accurate reporting. The trailers were completely scrubbed with a caustic chemical which left our guys unable to determine which chemicals were actaully being processed. How many times have you scrubbed your baloon machine with caustic chemicals?
Bingo. I think we actaully got 4 or 5 different versions of their use from our Iraqi prisoners.
Hopefully not learned too late.
Go here, to the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD--30 September 2004 Links to both PDF and HTML versions are provided in handy, Table of Contents format.
A preemptive strike by Tenet, hoping to shift the blame off of him and onto anyone else. Dr. Rice is a convenient target since the RATs are so skilled at character assassination and Dr. Rice is about to enter the hearing cycle. It Tenet publishes anything, it should be titled "I'm Sorry."
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An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.
Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: "They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons."
Questions over the claimed purpose of trailer for making biological weapons include:
· The lack of any trace of pathogens found in the fermentation tanks. According to experts, when weapons inspectors checked tanks in the mid-Nineties that had been scoured to disguise their real use, traces of pathogens were still detectable.
· The use of canvas sides on vehicles where technicians would be working with dangerous germ cultures.
· A shortage of pumps required to create vacuum conditions required for working with germ cultures and other processes usually associated with making biological weapons.
· The lack of an autoclave for steam sterilisation, normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production. Its lack of availability between production runs would threaten to let in germ contaminants, resulting in failed weapons.
· The lack of any easy way for technicians to remove germ fluids from the processing tank.
One of those expressing severe doubts about the alleged mobile germ labs is Professor Harry Smith, who chairs the Royal Society's working party on biological weapons.
He told The Observer 'I am concerned about the canvas sides. Ideally, you would want airtight facilities for making something like anthrax. Not only that, it is a very resistant organism and even if the Iraqis cleaned the equipment, I would still expect to find some trace of it.'
His view is shared by the working group of the Federation of American Scientists and by the CIA, which states: 'Senior Iraqi officials of the al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development, and Engineering facility in Mosul were shown pictures of the mobile production trailers, and they claimed that the trailers were used to chemically produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons.'
Rice had been in a few months. Tenet had been in for years!!!
The only conclusion came to regarding those labs was that there was no way to tell what they were used for
Which page of the pdf covers the mobile labs?
I suggest you read all 19 pages to get a clearer understanding of how the ISG came to some of these conclusions.
The Duelfer report incorperated the conclusions of the Kay interim report.
How do we know that this story is not being manipulated from the get-go?
Tenet (who was awarded the Freedom Medal by Bush) is going to try and undermine Condi before she steps into the State Job?
Somehow, I do not believe the story.
Besides, Tenet was not the sharpest knife in the drawer!
If Tenet feeels so strongly about Condi, maybe he should toss his Medal of FReedom over the WH fence as an act of protest and solidarity with the enemies within.
Once a Rat, always a Rat.
Throughout the 1990s and up to OIF (March 2003), Saddam focused on one set of objectives: the survival of himself, his Regime, and his legacy. To secure those objectives, Saddam needed to exploit Iraqi oil assets, to portray a strong military capability to deter internal and external threats, and to foster his image as an Arab leader. Saddam recognized that the reconstitution of Iraqi WMD enhanced both his security and image. Consequently, Saddam needed to end UN-imposed sanctions to fulfi ll his goals.
Saddam severely under estimated the economic and military costs of invading Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990, as well as underestimating the subsequent international condemnation of his invasion of Kuwait. He did not anticipate this condemnation, nor the subsequent imposition, comprehensiveness, severity, and longevity of UN sanctions. His initial belief that UN sanctions would not last, resulting in his country’s economic decline, changed by 1998 when the UNSC did not lift sanctions after he believed resolutions were fulfi lled. Although Saddam had reluctantly accepted the UN’s Oil for Food (OFF) program by 1996, he soon recognized its economic value and additional opportunities for further manipulation and infl uence of the UNSC Iraq 661 Sanctions Committee member states. Therefore, he resigned himself to the continuation of UN sanctions understanding that they would become a “paper tiger” regardless of continued US resolve to maintain them.
One aspect of Saddam’s strategy of unhinging the UN’s sanctions against Iraq, centered on Saddam’s efforts to infl uence certain UN SC permanent members, such as Russia, France, and China and some nonpermanent (Syria, Ukraine) members to end UN sanctions. Under Saddam’s orders, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) formulated and implemented a strategy aimed at these UNSC members and international public opinion with the purpose of ending UN sanctions and undermining its subsequent OFF program by diplomatic and economic means. At a minimum, Saddam wanted to divide the fi ve permanent members and foment international public support of Iraq at the UN and throughout the world by a savvy public relations campaign and an extensive diplomatic effort. [emphasis theirs, HTML formatting mine; I would have emphasized different sections really]
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