Posted on 07/12/2003 12:52:33 PM PDT by Cathryn Crawford
George Tenet's admission last night that it was his mistake that caused President Bush to use faulty intelligence in his State of The Union address is interesting at the same time as it is convienent. In the statement itself, which is lengthy and filled with reasons as to the intelligence failure, Tenet wholeheartedly takes responsility for his agency.
"Let me be clear about several things right up front. First, CIA approved the President's State of the Union address before it was delivered. Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my Agency. And third, the President had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President. "
On the face of it, this admission seems like the perfect solution to the growing problems for both the Bush and Blair administration. It's all CIA's fault, they can claim. But is that really viable?
On the face of it, perhaps. But Bush is the President. He has to take final responsibility, doesn't he?
If Bush can truly claim to know absolutely nothing, then don't we have a serious problem - wouldn't that imply that Bush is either incompetent or is simply not paying attention?
For discussion purposes - has Bush been conned by Tenet? And if he has, isn't that rather serious?
And if he wasn't conned by Tenet, what is the alternative?
Exactly. But, that is really beside the point. This really is a tempest in a teapot boiled up by toadies like tea-drinker Joseph C. Wilson 4th so they can attack President Bush's integrity. The Democrats have none so they think that if they can take that out Bush is (as Terry McAuliffe yelled at a Fox News reporter yesterday) done.
Maybe Dan and Cathryn will send you a postcard when they reach that destination called, "the perfect world".
Yes, absolutely. This is precisely what is happening. The Islamists have been killing our people for thirty years now, and until now we have only been nibbling around the edges of the problem. And our strategic situation has been deteriorating, because of our alliance with the Saudis, because of the EU's alliance with Saddam and Arafat.
But, despite family ties to the Saudis, GW Bush has begun to reshape the equation. Essentially, if you picture the Islamists as a mob moving down the alley towards us, GW has picked out the loudest, most dangerous, but also the most vulnerable of the louts, and has jumped on him. The others have been taking by surprise, and are back-peddling.
We have essentially declared war on the Saudis, as well, while hugging them and mugging for the cameras. The Green Berets have been sent into Mindinao, into Georgia, into Yemen, we are training police and troops in every one of the 'Stans, we have wiped out the Taliban, we are in the process of annihilating and disassembling every one of Saudi Arabia's operations.
And the Saudis have seen their world tilt on its axis as we have begun to withdraw our troops from their territory to their Gulf neighbors, and into Iraq, and as their Wahabist creation has begun to target them as well.
This is a chess game, and we are in the process of pulling the legs out from under our enemies. The thirty years of one-side warfare is over.
He may not have used it before the Security Council but the State Department did issue a press release in December 02 that included the claim. This was, of course 9 months after the CIA operative had returned with the finding of bogus.
I cannot figure out how to post that document but I will email it to anyone who cares to see it. It is in pdf as an image so you cannot use the clip board to take out the text.
You need to do a spell check. You misspelled "convenient."
That applies to the outside world but not to the enemy within. The Democrats and all their leftist toadies are still engaged in eye-gouging hand-to-hand combat and we are still fighting by the Marquis de Queensberry Rules.
Excellent observations. Thanks
Maybe. Should I await the postman? :-)
British intel says it happened. We have the word of a Clinton appointee, who simply asked the Gov of Niger if it were true, and then asked the mining company the same question. And, based on the word of those two, has rejected the findings of MI 6.
That is not an investigation. Were they going to say "yes"?
And based on that, we are going to fire Tenet?
LOL - Because you've been in the sun too long.
Welcome back, Howlin!! ;-)
Have read such sentiment recently. Now who's Wilson's echo?
That is a possibility but I think the thread was posted to try to provide those legs the Democrats so desperately want to create.
I don't think he's going to be hung by it, because that's not how politics works. In 2004 it will be economy, stupid, just as it was in 1992.
What does bother me is that Clinton's CIA Director should have been removed from his position the day before Bush became President. Instead, he's still there, sinking this administration and this country ever deeper into the mire.
The measure of Bush's character is whether he will dismiss Tenet now, or whether he will still have 'full faith and confidence' in a man who misled the country about Sudanese aspirin factories, Chinese missiles, Serbian genocides, Osama bin Laden's intentions, and now an $80 billion war with Iraq.
If Bush doesn't let the man go, it doesn't mean that Bush is forgiving, it means that Bush lacks the character to admit he made a mistake in allowing this obviously incompetent individual to keep his power for so long.
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