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Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq | AfterDowningStreet.org

Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2007-04-27 17:23. Evidence

By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI, New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 26 — George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.

A copy of the book was purchased at retail price in advance of publication by a reporter for The New York Times. Mr. Tenet described with sarcasm watching an episode of “Meet the Press” last September in which Mr. Cheney twice referred to Mr. Tenet’s “slam dunk” remark as the basis for the decision to go to war.

“I remember watching and thinking, ‘As if you needed me to say ‘slam dunk’ to convince you to go to war with Iraq,’ ” Mr. Tenet writes.

As violence in Iraq spiraled beginning in late 2003, Mr. Tenet writes, “rather than acknowledge responsibility, the administration’s message was: Don’t blame us. George Tenet and the C.I.A. got us into this mess.”

Mr. Tenet takes blame for the flawed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s weapons programs, calling the episode “one of the lowest moments of my seven-year tenure.” He expresses regret that the document was not more nuanced, but says there was no doubt in his mind at the time that Saddam Hussein possessed unconventional weapons. “In retrospect, we got it wrong partly because the truth was so implausible,” he writes.

Despite such sweeping indictments, Mr. Bush, who in 2004 awarded Mr. Tenet a Presidential Medal of Freedom, is portrayed personally in a largely positive light, with particular praise for the his leadership after the 2001 attacks. “He was absolutely in charge, determined, and directed,” Mr. Tenet writes of the president, whom he describes as a blunt-spoken kindred spirit.

But Mr. Tenet largely endorses the view of administration critics that Mr. Cheney and a handful of Pentagon officials, including Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith, were focused on Iraq as a threat in late 2001 and 2002 even as Mr. Tenet and the C.I.A. concentrated mostly on Al Qaeda.

Mr. Tenet describes helping to kill a planned speech by Mr. Cheney on the eve of the invasion because its claims of links between Al Qaeda and Iraq went “way beyond what the intelligence shows.”

“Mr. President, we cannot support the speech and it should not be given,” Mr. Tenet wrote that he told Mr. Bush. Mr. Cheney never delivered the remarks.

Mr. Tenet hints at some score-settling in the book. He describes in particular the extraordinary tension between him and Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, in internal debate over how the president came to say erroneously in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa.

He describes an episode in 2003, shortly after he issued a statement taking partial responsibility for that error. He said he was invited over for a Sunday afternoon, back-patio lemonade by Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state. Mr. Powell described what Mr. Tenet called “a lively debate” on Air Force One a few days before about whether the White House should continue to support Mr. Tenet as C.I.A. director.

“In the end, the president said yes, and said so publicly,” Mr. Tenet wrote. “But Colin let me know that other officials, particularly the vice president, had quite another view.”

He writes that the controversy over who was to blame for the State of the Union error was the beginning of the end of his tenure. After the finger-pointing between the White House and the C.I.A., he wrote, “My relationship with the administration was forever changed.”

Mr. Tenet also says in the book that he had been “not at all sure I wanted to accept” the Medal of Freedom. He agreed after he saw that the citation “was all about the C.I.A.’s work against terrorism, not Iraq.”

He also expresses skepticism about whether the increase in troops in Iraq will prove successful. “It may have worked more than three years ago,” he wrote. “My fear is that sectarian violence in Iraq has taken on a life of its own and that U.S. forces are becoming more and more irrelevant to the management of that violence.”

Mr. Tenet says he decided to write the memoir in part because the infamous “slam dunk” episode had come to define his tenure at C.I.A.

He gives a detailed account of the episode, which occurred during an Oval Office meeting in December 2002 when the administration was preparing to make public its case for war against Iraq.

During the meeting, the deputy C.I.A. director, John McLaughlin, unveiled a draft of a proposed public presentation that left the group unimpressed. Mr. Tenet recalls that Mr. Bush suggested that they could “add punch” by bringing in lawyers trained to argue cases before a jury.

“I told the president that strengthening the public presentation was a ‘slam dunk,’ a phrase that was later taken completely out of context,” Mr. Tenet writes. “If I had simply said, ‘I’m sure we can do better,’ I wouldn’t be writing this chapter — or maybe even this book.”

Mr. Tenet has spoken rarely in public, and never so caustically, since stepping down in July 2004.

Asked about Mr. Tenet’s assertions, a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, defended the prewar deliberations on Thursday. “The president made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein for a number of reasons, mainly the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s own actions, and only after a thorough and lengthy assessment of all available information as well as Congressional authorization,” the spokesman said.

The book recounts C.I.A. efforts to fight Al Qaeda in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks, and Mr. Tenet’s early warnings about Osama bin Laden. He contends that the urgent appeals of the C.I.A. on terrorism received a lukewarm reception at the Bush White House through most of 2001.

“The bureaucracy moved slowly,” and only after the Sept. 11 attacks was the C.I.A. given the counterterrorism powers it had requested earlier in the year.

Mr. Tenet confesses to “a black, black time” two months after the 2001 attacks when, sitting in front of his house in his favorite Adirondack chair, he “just lost it.”

“I thought about all the people who had died and what we had been through in the months since,” he writes. “What am I doing here? Why me?” Mr. Tenet gives a vigorous defense of the C.I.A.’s program to hold captured Qaeda members in secret overseas jails and to question them with harsh techniques, which he does not explicitly describe.

Mr. Tenet expresses puzzlement that, since 2001, Al Qaeda has not sent “suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half-dozen American shopping malls on any given day.”

“I do know one thing in my gut,” he writes. “Al Qaeda is here and waiting.”

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington, and Julie Bosman from New York.

A28: ImpeachSpace

Check the Impeach Bush web site:

The Bush Crime Family:

Bush Senior
Bush son
Cheney
Rove
Rumsfeld
Wolfwitz

If we had a trully democratic goverment,

Bush and Cheney would have been impeached by now.

Only in US this can happen:

The people is against the Iraq war, and against all the corruption perpetrated by he Bush Crime Family with the help of the Supreme court judges anf the help of the US Attorney general: The “Gonzo man” from Texas and a puppet of Bush.

GW Bush the Anti-Christ himself must go along with all his fellow tugs.

“The Bush Crime family is responsible for the death of about 600,000 civil Iraq citizens”.

Bush is not a Christian, he is an alcoholic and drug addict.

His only interest in life is to steal the oil from the Middle-East (Iraq and others).

Call your Senator and House Representative and ask for impeachment Proceedigs to start.

April 2nd, 2007 9:16 pm
Reid may move to cut Iraq war funds

By Anne Flaherty / Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday he wants to cut off money for the Iraq war next year, making clear for the first time that Democrats are willing to pull out all the stops to end U.S. involvement.

Reid’s new strategy faces an uphill battle because many of his colleagues see yanking funds as a dangerous last resort. The proposal increases the stakes on the debate and marks a new era for the Democratic leadership once reluctant to talk about Congress’ power of the purse.

“In the face of the administration’s stubborn unwillingness to change course, the Senate has no choice but to force a change of course,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who signed on Monday as a co-sponsor of Reid’s proposal with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.

The move is likely to intensify the Democrats’ rift with the administration, which already contends Democrats are putting troops at risk by setting deadlines.

“It’s time the self-appointed strategists on Capitol Hill understood a very simple concept: You cannot win a war if you tell the enemy you’re going to quit,” Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday at a fundraising luncheon for Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

Also Monday, President Bush conferred by secure videoconference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on the pace of a nearly seven-week-old security crackdown. Extra troops from both countries are aiming to calm Baghdad and troubled Anbar Province, and some initial improvement has been reported.

Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for Bush’s National Security Council, said the leaders agreed that the effort “must be carried out until lasting success can be achieved.” Al-Maliki repeated his promise to pass legislation seen as key to moving Sunnis and Shiites from battling each other to political compromise.

In recent weeks, the House and Senate voted separately to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but set an end date for combat in Iraq. The House proposal orders all combat troops out of Iraq as of Aug. 31, 2008, whereas the Senate orders some troops to leave right away with the nonbinding goal of ending combat by March 31, 2008.

The House and Senate are working on a final proposal that can be sent to the president by the end of the month.

Bush has said several times he would veto the measure, and Republicans say they’ll back him. On Monday, 154 House Republicans sent Bush a letter promising to stick with him in opposition to the legislation.

Mindful that they hold a shaky majority in Congress and that neither chamber has enough votes to override a presidential veto, Democrats are already thinking about the next step after Bush rejects their legislation.

Reid said Monday that if that happens, he will join forces with Feingold, one of the party’s most liberal members who has long called to end the war by denying funding for it.

Reid has previously stopped short of embracing Feingold’s position. When asked whether he would ever consider pulling funds for the troops, Reid said Congress would provide troops what they needed to be safe.

Reid’s latest proposal would give the president one year to get troops out, ending funding for combat operations after March 31, 2008.

“If the president vetoes the supplemental appropriations bill and continues to resist changing course in Iraq, I will work to ensure this legislation receives a vote in the Senate in the next work period,” Reid said in a statement.

The White House and congressional Democrats had promised in January to work together when Democrats took over control of Congress. Since then, however, the two sides have found little agreement when it comes to the war. They traded barbs over the weekend and on Monday, when the White House said Democrats were denying the military what it needed to do its job.

“It appears they’re still content to work on a bill that does not have serious plans to fund troops or make Iraq, America and the world more secure, but rather attempts at forcing us into giving up in Iraq without regard to the consequences of failure,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Reid’s proposal is unlikely to pass. But Democrats say they believe with each passing week — as the violence in Iraq continues and voters grow increasingly tired of the war — they pick up additional support.

The Senate last week passed its anti-war proposal by a 50-48 vote after winning support from Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., who just two weeks prior had opposed a similar measure.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley said if legislation to cut off funding for the war fails, Reid will try again with the hopes of getting new supporters. “It is the next in a series of steps to try to ratchet up the pressure to try to get the administration to change its policies,” he said.

The bill to cut off funds for the war would likely be introduced as standalone legislation and would not be tied to the supplemental spending bill, Manley said.

April 3rd, 2007 11:56 pm
US troops will pay if war funding blocked: Bush

(AFP) — President George W. Bush lashed out at US lawmakers Tuesday, warning that a fight over war funding will only hurt US troops in Iraq and scolding Congress for going on holiday despite unfinished business.

If Congress does not approve a war funding bill in coming weeks, “the price of that failure will be paid by our troops and their loved ones,” Bush told reporters.

“The bottom line is this: Congress’s failure to fund our troops on the front line also means that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines,” Bush warned.

“And others can see their loved ones headed back to the war sooner than they need to. That is unacceptable to me, and I believe it is unacceptable to the American people.”

Bush renewed his vow to use his presidential powers to veto a bill which ties funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a timetable to end the US presence in Iraq.

Monday, Senate Democrats raised the stakes in the bitter fight, unveiling a new bid to cut off nearly all funding for the Iraq war after March 31, 2008 if Bush vetoes the bill they plan to submit to the White House.

The date was set as a goal for withdrawing most combat troops in the 122 billion war budget bill passed by the Senate.

The measure, co-sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Russ Feingold, would permit funding only for operations against Al-Qaeda, training and equipping Iraqi troops, and protecting US personnel and installations.

But Bush hit out at US lawmakers for being irresponsible, and urged Congress to make good on its pledges of support for US troops.

“Congress’s most basic responsibilities (are) to give our troops the equipment and training they need to fight our enemies and to protect our nation. They’re now failing in that responsibility,” he said.

“Now they have left Washington for spring recess without finishing the work. Democrat leaders in Congress seem more interested in fighting political battles in Washington than providing our troops what they need to fight the battles in Iraq.”

Democrats plan to officially unveil the new legislation on April 10 when the Senate returns from its Easter break.

Senator Hillary Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for the 2008 presidential election, urged supporters to petition Bush to drop his veto threat.

“The American people have had enough of the president’s failed strategy in Iraq,” read the message on Clinton’s presidential campaign website.

“Join Hillary in telling him to listen to the will of the people and to Congress, withdraw his veto threat, and begin phased deployment of the troops out of Iraq.”

Reid said Monday he would aim to bring the bill back before Senate if the president were to veto it, and Feingold told supporters via email: “Our bill funds the troops, it just de-funds the war.”

It is a high-stakes poker game. Democrats who swept to power in November’s election still lack the large majorities in the two-chamber Congress needed to overcome a Bush veto, and they are depending on widespread fatigue over the war to keep the public on their side.

The White House is also playing to the public, declaring that Congress is giving the enemy a timetable to take over.

Negotiators in Congress are spending the current recess reconciling the House and Senate versions of the budget bill so a compromise version can be sent to Bush’s desk for signing.

The House version of the war budget contains a withdrawal deadline of August 31, 2008.

Vice President Dick Cheney warned on Monday the United States faced defeat in Iraq if Democrats succeed in imposing withdrawal.

“When members of Congress speak not of victory but of time limits, deadlines, or other arbitrary measures, they’re telling the enemy to simply watch the clock and wait us out,” he said.