If they question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied. Rudyard Kipling
Mercifully, the flurry of media coverage of former CIA director George Tenet hawking his memoir, “At the Center of the Storm,” has abated. Buffeted by those on both right and left who see through his lame attempt at self-justification, Tenet probably now wishes he had opted to just fade away, as old soldiers used to do.
He listened instead to his old PR buddy and “co-author” Bill Harlow who failed miserably in trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. By this point, they may be having second thoughts. But, hey, the $4 million advance is a tidy sum, even when split two ways. Aside from the money, what else could they have been thinking?
Tenet’s book is a self-indictment for the crimes with which Socrates was charged: making the worse cause appear the better, and corrupting the youth.
But George is not the kind to take the hemlock. Rather, with no apparent shame, he accepted what one wag has labeled the “Presidential Medal of Silence” in return for agreeing to postpone his Nixon-style “modified limited hangout” until after the mid-term elections last November. The $4 million advance that Tenet and Harlow took for the book marked a shabby, inauspicious beginning to the effort to stitch together what remains of Tenet’s tattered reputation.
Here in Washington we are pretty much inured to effrontery, but Tenet’s book and tiresome interviews have earned him the degree for chutzpah summa cum laude. We are supposed to feel sorry for this pathetic soul, who could not muster the integrity simply to tell the truth and stave off unspeakable carnage in Iraq. Rather, when his masters lied to justify war, Tenet simply lacked the courage to tell his fellow citizens that America was about to launch what the post WWII Nuremberg Tribunal called the “supreme international crime”—a war of aggression.
Tenet’s pitiable apologia demonstrates once again not only that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but also that the corruption befouls all those nearby.
Cheney’s Chess
For those of prurient bent, the book offers a keyhole-peep into a White House of ill repute, with Vice President Dick Cheney playing at his chess board, moving sniveling pawns like Tenet from one square to another.
Someone should have told the former CIA director that unprovoked war is not some sort of game. Out of respect for the tens of thousands killed and maimed in Iraq, it is time to start calling spades spades. It was a high crime, a premeditated felony to have taken part in this conspiracy.
Not surprisingly, few of Tenet’s talk-show hosts were armed with enough facts to pierce the smoke and the arrogant now-you-listen-to-me approach from Bill Harlow’s PR toolbox. Whether out of ignorance or just habit, celebrity interviewers kept cutting Tenet more and more slack. Understandable, I suppose, for they, like Tenet, were enthusiastic cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq. And so, affable, hot-blooded George was allowed to filibuster, bob, weave, and blow still more smoke. Tenet should not be behind a microphone; he should be behind bars.
With nauseating earnestness, Tenet keeps saying:
“I believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
This is a lie. And no matter how many times he says it (after the axiom of his master, George W. Bush, who has stressed publicly that repetition is necessary to “catapult the propaganda”), Tenet can no longer conceal the deceit. Indeed, the only other possibility—that he is (as he complains) being made the useful “idiot” on whom Vice President Dick Cheney and others mean to blame the war—can be ruled out.
Tenet was indeed useful to Cheney and Bush, but he is no idiot. Those who do not rely exclusively on the corporate media for their information know Tenet for what he is—a charlatan. A willing co-conspirator, he did for Bush and Cheney what propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels did for Hitler. The key difference is that Goebbels and his Nazi collaborators, rather than writing books and taking sinecures to enrich themselves, were held accountable at Nuremberg.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his 27-years as a CIA analyst, he chaired NIEs: he is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Tenet, like the rest of the politicians in this criminal governmet lie as part of their living. Politics, politicians and lying have gone hand in hand for centuries.
George is no different than the other lying George in power. Steal, kill, distort, spy and lie.
No one even mentions the boxes of data from Iraq about their Weapons and their disposal.
Remember there was thousands of documents, yet, 'they' still said that Iraq had not accounted for them all.
Scott Ritter said that there was no way that they could have accounted for every one of them.
bushco was making Iraq prove a negative. Making it impossible to stop the US from attacking Iraq.
Our media was telling us that the inspectors were still not permitted to inspect all they wanted. Then they wanted to inspect the palace bunkers. I'm sure that bush would let inspectors, reporting back to Iran, know where he would go in an emergancy, and what exact precautions had been taken to protect our congress and government. LOL
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LYNNE KRINGLER (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 41 comments)
on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 11:32:26 PM
The first and foremost, in my mind, is the question of logic.
Why would you bomb the hell out of a country, village, and/or city, to get a few thugs?
Wouldn't that be like bombing Ireland to get the IRA's?
Like bombing Las Vegas, Chicago and New jersy to get the mofia?
Like bombing LA, San Francisco, chicago, NY to get the gangs?
Like bombing Texas, NY, CA., Florida, NM, and others to get the drug dealers?
I'm really serious about this. Kerry suggested that it should be handled the same as any other crime, using special forces, CIA, FBI ect. He was mocked by everyone. I think, he is absolutely right.
I watched as the troops and an 'embedded' reporter, on the way to Baghdad, stopped to wait for the rest of the column. They went into a huge ammo dump (al caucau, mispelled), they broke and entered a sealed bunker, (no special protective gear), opened boxes of white powdery stuff, there were stacks of them. Weapons were everywhere. As they left the bunkers and were sitting there, a pickup with Iraqis zoomed by with 4-6 men (inside the ammo dump) and waved at them. Later an UN inspector explained what we had seen. It was one of the largest dumps in Iraq. The little seal was an UN seal. That dump had just been inspected earlier that month, and was intact. The powdery stuff was highly explosive, (used for construction of tunnels and such) 'a small handful could bring down a 707 (?) airplane'. Next we heard, the dump had been left unguarded and was empty. They tried to say that it had already been emptied. Whoops! the film had been on the way into Baghdad and had just been inspected (intact). Then they tried to show a satellite photo of 1 truck and explained that it must of been the Russians. Whoops! no Russians after the invasion. I believe that that powdery stuff and the rest of the munitions out of unguarded ammo dumps, all over Iraq, are killing our troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Where was the logic in this?
1. Why would they pull the inspectors out to bomb Iraq?
2. Why would they have to lie about tubes and Niger if they had all of that other 'proof'?
3. Why wouldn't they secure the ammo dumps? the borders?
4. Why was bremmer allowed to give those 100 orders before leaving Iraq? Why are most of them still in effect?
5. Why won't the State Dept let the Pentagon re-open the state owned, shuttered factories?
6. Why are we letting the US multi-nationals plunder Iraq and protecting them with our troops and billions or trillions of tax-payer dollars?
Who are we fighting and how do our troops know which is which as they are kicking down doors, arresting, imprisoning, beating, torturing or even killing them?
Why have we not repeated and echoed over and over, and over "the facts are being fixed around the policy"?
Hope you can answer some of these questions. It seems as though my congressmen cannot or will not.
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LYNNE KRINGLER (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 41 comments)
on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 12:16:54 AM
"not always successful," (unlike your analyses Mr. McGovern)
This is worth being awake at 3:14 am! Nothing like real history to explain the lies and deceit of the ultimate Mandarin, the so-called Democrat from the HIll, George Tenet.
....not always successful!!! The Tenet flack phrase needs explamation marks. Let's see, there was 911, then the botched opportunities in Afghanistan, and, reaching his perroration, Tenet is the nation;s midwife for Iraq.
My undertanding is that Leon Jaworski convicted the Watergate crew on a simple statute called defrauding the federal government: your work is so pathetic, it's fraud to take a paycheck. There so many in the WH that merit this distinction but no cabinet member more deserving than Tenet. He knew better.
Outstanding article. Thanks for being our best source on the truth about intelligence and, in the case of Tenet and the neo conseravtive cadre, the lack thereof.
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Michael Collins (79 articles, 11 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 279 comments)
on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 2:31:16 AM
