George Tenet (Former CIA Director) Says White House Never Seriously Discussed Iraq

Makkonnen

Makkonnen

The Quizatz Haderach
BGOL Investor
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003109.php

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<span class="entry_title"><img src="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/images/tenet.jpg" align="left" hspace="5" vspace="5">Today's Must Read</span><br>
<span class="entry_date">By Paul Kiel - April 27, 2007, 9:18 AM</span>
<span class="entry_body"><p><span class="smallcaps">George Bush insulates</span> himself from reality! The administration didn't seriously entertain the notion that Iraq didn't have WMD's! Dick Cheney is an asshole!</p>

<p>OK, so the revelations in George Tenet's new book aren't going to shock anyone, but they are notable considering the source. </p>

<p>Tenet will appear on 60 Minutes this Sunday to roll out his new memoir, which will be released next week. <a set="yes" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/washington/27intel.html?ex=1335326400&amp;en=e6f2a5232d75afb5&amp;ei=5090&amp;partner=rssuserland&amp;emc=rss"><em>The New York Times</em></a> got a copy. And, well, are you shocked by this?</p>

<blockquote>“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.</blockquote>

<p>I didn't think so.</p>

<p>Most talk about the book so far has centered on Tenet's head-scratching explanation for his "slam dunk" comment. It took place in a private 2002 White House meeting:</p>

<blockquote>During the meeting, the deputy C.I.A. director, John McLaughlin, unveiled a draft of a proposed public presentation [on Iraq's possession of WMDs] 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.

<p>“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.”</p></blockquote>

<p>I'm not sure that the distinction between Tenet's intended meaning and the administration's interpretation of the comment is quite as glaring as he wants it to be. But his broader point -- that the "slam dunk" comment was far from the watershed moment it's been made out to be because Bush's and Cheney's minds were already made up -- is a solid one. But then, we already knew that.</p>

<p>Among other unsurprising revelations, the book portrays the president as slow to accept the reality in Iraq. This description comes from <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tenet27apr27,1,7379412.story?track=rss"><em>The Los Angeles Times</em></a>, which got details of the book from two former CIA officials who've read it:</p>

<blockquote>...[T]he book describes warnings from the CIA station in Baghdad that were greeted with dismay and mounting suspicion within the White House, including a November 2003 assessment that described the situation as an insurgency.

<p>After that assessment was leaked to the press, Bush summoned Tenet and other CIA officials to the White House and warned that he didn't want anyone in his administration to use the term "insurgency," according to the officials.</p>

<p>"There's a lot of stuff in the book that paints a picture of an administration wrapped in its own beliefs, not being able to handle information that was contrary to those beliefs," said the former official who commented about Tenet's view of Cheney.</p></blockquote>

<p>Shocked?</p>


------


He will be on 60 minutes this Sunday and every major newspaper has a story on this. If you want a real good laugh check out Dana Perino's (White House Press Sec) press conference today it should have some great lies and utter bullshit to explain this away.
 
<font size="5"><center>
Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq </font size></center>


27tenet-600.jpg

George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, with President Bush and
Vice President Dick Cheney, foreground, in March 2003. Mr. Tenet now says there
was never a “serious debate” about the Iraq threat.


New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: April 27, 2007

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.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/washington/27intel.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=books
 
QueEx said:
Now I'm sure George Tenet has been reading BGOL Politics Board. His memoirs are saying what we've been saying for a couple of years in the Liberal Media?, White-Out of bush’s Impeachable Offense!!! thread http://198.65.131.81/board/showthread.php?t=36440&page=1&pp=45 and other threads, forever.

QueEx
Click to expand...
:) Remember when people would actually argue with me about the merits of the war and how innocent Iraqis were better off? Where are all the cowards who drank the kool aid now? That GW KoolAid has a helluva hangover I guess.
 
BTW nice way to pick up extra dollars, dropping a bombshell tell-all book about a President and Administration hated by the better part of the planet.

I don't think Tenet is doing anything but proving he's just as big a scumbag as Bush. He even infers that he'd never have told the truth if Bush hadn't thrown him under the bus.
 
Frankly, I don't see how Tenet COULD NOT HAVE made the truth known to the Administration in the most EMPHACTIC way possible. He knew that we were in the walk-up to an invasion. How could any sane person, politics aside, not insist upon the truth?

QueEx
 
QueEx said:
Frankly, I don't see how Tenet COULD NOT HAVE made the truth known to the Administration in the most EMPHACTIC way possible. He knew that we were in the walk-up to an invasion. How could any sane person, politics aside, not insist upon the truth?

QueEx
Click to expand...
You don't see how a politician couldn't give a fuck about the truth? :lol:

He didn't have to make what was already known, known. 9-11, which they allowed to happen, was only the catalyst to launching plans drawn up years before by Wolfowitz and friends.

I didnt post it but did you hear that French Intelligence warned that Al-Qaeda was going to attack NY buildings with planes in January of 2001? I can make a thread if you didnt catch that.

If I and others tell you over and over that Im going to do something to you and I already have done something to you, what do you call your inaction in the face of a new threat other than willful negligence?
 
Re: George Tenet (Former CIA Director) Says White House Never Seriously Discussed Ira

Why wait so many years before blowing the whistle? :angry:
 
Re: George Tenet (Former CIA Director) Says White House Never Seriously Discussed Ira

Whipes13 said:
Why wait so many years before blowing the whistle? :angry:
Click to expand...
He waited until Bush and CO. blamed everything on him.
 
Re: George Tenet (Former CIA Director) Says White House Never Seriously Discussed Ira

<font size=""5><cneter>About that Presidential Medal of Freedom, Mr. Tenet</font size></center>

James Fallows
April 29, 2007

Two and a half years ago, after interviewing many, many people involved in shaping Iraq-war policy, I wrote the following in the Atlantic (and then in Blind into Baghdad):

There is no evidence that the President and those closest to him ever talked systematically about the "opportunity costs" and tradeoffs in their decision to invade Iraq.

No one has pointed to a meeting, a memo, a full set of discussions, about what America would gain and lose.

The Administration apparently did not consider questions like "If we pursue the war on terror by invading Iraq, might we incite even more terror in the long run?" and "If we commit so many of our troops this way, what possibilities will we be giving up?" Bush "did not think of this, intellectually, as a comparative decision," I was told by Senator Bob Graham, of Florida, who voted against the war resolution for fear it would hurt the fight against terrorism. "It was a single decision: he saw Saddam Hussein as an evil person who had to be removed." ... A man who participated in high-level planning for both Afghanistan and Iraq--and who is unnamed here because he still works for the government--told me, "There was absolutely no debate in the normal sense."​

Comes now George Tenet. In those days, as CIA director, Tenet was the man who sat so visibly and solemnly behind Colin Powell during Powell's crucial UN speech presenting "proof" of the WMD threat from Iraq. Tenet's sober presence suggested how powerful America's evidence must be. In those days, Tenet was inseparable from President Bush and from the argument that, as the inescapable next step in the "war on terror," America had to invade Iraq. On December 2, 2004, Tenet was at the White House for perhaps the most cynically dishonorable day in the history of American public service: the day when the freshly reelected President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to three men: the one who publicly vouched for a misleading case for invading Iraq (Tenet); the one who beat Saddam's army but was entirely uninterested in what came next (Gen. Tommy Franks), and the one who helped turned that next stage into a catastrophe (Amb. L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer III).

Now Tenet tells us -- according to this story in the New York Times -- that the Administration pushed the country toward war without ever conducting a "serious debate" about Iraq's threat and the possible U.S. responses.

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.​

Gee, thanks for telling us now, Mr. Tenet. Now -- not when it was happening, and the news might still have changed national policy and spared us a "war of choice." Now -- not before the 2004 election, which as the President has told us was the "accountability moment" for his policy toward Iraq. (How differently the world would view the United States if, at its first chance after the Iraq invasion, the public had rejected rather than ratified the policies that led to war.) Now -- when it's not clear what difference it can make at all. People open to evidence about the war, including the majority of the public, now generally consider it to have been a mistake, which doesn't make the decision about what to do next any easier. People not open to evidence still control the Executive Branch. One more book won't change their minds.

If you felt so strongly, why did you wait to say anything until you knew it couldn't do any good? Of course, saying something earlier would have meant resigning in protest, a step that still is vanishingly rare. And there would not have been that Medal of Freedom. Perhaps you'll wear it on the book tour? Just a thought.

Addendum: Sounding harsh is not attractive, and it's possible that I'm being unfair to the whole case Tenet makes. I haven't read the book (which is not yet officially published) and am judging only on the parts quoted in the New York Times. So why this harshness? It's my frustration about people who tell us now that they had cold feet about what is either the most damaging, or the second-most damaging, decision in American diplomatic history, the other possibility being Vietnam. (I think Iraq will prove to be the worst. Many more Americans died in Vietnam than will in Iraq, and -- unless regional war in the Middle East becomes truly catastrophic -- the civilian and military deaths of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians will outweigh those in Iraq. But the slow, step-by-step escalation in Vietnam was, sadly, more logical and understandable than the wholly discretionary decision to invade Iraq. The long term damage to America's interests and reputation will, I think, be greater -- but we'll see.) So I find it hard to be as understanding and tolerant as I would like to be, when someone who might have made a difference but didn't, at the time, later tells us he was skeptical all along. This is, similarly, why the Iraq years did such damage to Colin Powell.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-fallows/about-that-presidential-m_b_47083.html
 
Re: George Tenet (Former CIA Director) Says White House Never Seriously Discussed Ira


No War is ever just or free of heartache and death but this war is legal

October 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the "Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq.

The resolution cited many factors to justify action:

* Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 cease fire, including interference with weapons inspectors
* Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and programs to develop such weapons, posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region"
* Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population"
* Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people"
* Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt of former President George H. W. Bush, and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War
* Members of al-Qaida were "known to be in Iraq"
* Iraq's "continu[ing] to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations," including anti-United States terrorist organizations
* Fear that Iraq would provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against the United States
* The efforts by the Congress and the President to fight the 9/11 terrorists and those who aided or harbored them
* The authorization by the Constitution and the Congress for the President to fight anti-United States terrorism

The Resolution required President Bush's diplomatic efforts at the UN Security Council to "obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion, and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions." It authorized the United States to use military force to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq."


Members of the Senate who voted for:

* Wayne Allard (R-CO)
* George Allen (R-VA)
* Max Baucus (D-MT)
* Evan Bayh (D-IN)
* Bob Bennett (R-UT)
* Joe Biden (D-DE)
* Kit Bond (R-MO)
* John Breaux (D-LA)
* Sam Brownback (R-KS)
* Jim Bunning (R-KY)
* Conrad Burns (R-MT)
* Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO)
* Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
* Jean Carnahan (D-MO)
* Tom Carper (D-DE)
* Max Cleland (D-GA)
* Hillary Clinton (D-NY)
* Thad Cochran (R-MS)
* Susan Collins (R-ME)
* Larry Craig (R-ID)
* Mike Crapo (R-ID)
* Tom Daschle (D-SD)
* Mike DeWine (R-OH)
* Christopher Dodd (D-CT)
* Pete Domenici (R-NM)
* Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
* John Edwards (D-NC)
* John Ensign (R-NV)
* Mike Enzi (R-WY)
* Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
* Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL)
* Bill Frist (R-TN)
* Phil Gramm (R-TX)
* Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
* Judd Gregg (R-NH)
* Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
* Tom Harkin (D-IA)
* Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
* Jesse Helms (R-NC)



* Fritz Hollings (D-SC)
* Tim Hutchinson (R-AR)
* Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)
* James Inhofe (R-OK)
* Tim Johnson(D-SD)
* John Kerry (D-MA)
* Herb Kohl (D-WI)
* Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
* Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
* Joe Lieberman (D-CT)
* Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
* Trent Lott (R-MS)
* Richard Lugar (R-IN)
* John McCain (R-AZ)
* Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
* Zell Miller (D-GA)
* Frank Murkowski (R-AK)
* Bill Nelson (D-FL)
* Ben Nelson (D-NE)
* Don Nickles (R-OK)
* Harry Reid (D-NV)
* Pat Roberts (R-KS)
* Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
* Rick Santorum (R-PA)
* Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
* Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
* Richard Shelby (R-AL)
* Robert Smith (R-NH)
* Gordon Smith (R-OR)
* Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
* Arlen Specter (R-PA)
* Ted Stevens (R-AK)
* Craig Thomas (R-WY)
* Fred Thompson (R-TN)
* Strom Thurmond (R-SC)
* Robert Torricelli (D-NJ)
* George Voinovich (R-OH)
* John Warner (R-VA)

Members of the Senate who voted against:

* Daniel Akaka (D-HI)
* Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
* Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
* Robert Byrd (D-WV)
* Lincoln Chafee (R-RI)
* Jon Corzine (D-NJ)
* Kent Conrad (D-ND)
* Mark Dayton (D-MN)
* Dick Durbin (D-IL)
* Russ Feingold (D-WI)
* Bob Graham (D-FL)
* Daniel Inouye (D-HI)



* Jim Jeffords (I-VT)
* Ted Kennedy (D-MA)
* Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
* Carl Levin (D-MI)
* Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
* Patty Murray (D-WA)
* Jack Reed (D-RI)
* Paul Sarbanes (D-MD)
* Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
* Paul Wellstone (D-MN)
* Ron Wyden (D-OR)

Members of the House of Representatives who voted for:

Ackerman Aderholt Akin Andrews Armey Bachus Baker Ballenger Barcia Barr Bartlett Barton Bass Bentsen Bereuter Berkley Berman Berry Biggert Bilirakis Bishop Blagojevich Blunt Boehlert Boehner Bonilla Bono Boozman Borski Boswell Boucher Boyd Brady (TX) Brown (SC) Bryant Burr Burton Buyer Callahan Calvert Camp Cannon Cantor Capito Carson (OK) Castle Chabot Chambliss Clement Coble Collins Combest Cooksey Cox Cramer Crane Crenshaw Crowley Cubin Culberson Cunningham Davis (FL) Davis, Jo Ann Davis, Tom Deal DeLay DeMint Deutsch Diaz-Balart Dicks Dooley Doolittle Dreier Dunn Edwards Ehlers Ehrlich Emerson Engel English Etheridge Everett Ferguson Flake Fletcher Foley Forbes Ford Fossella Frelinghuysen Frost Gallegly Ganske Gekas Gephardt Gibbons Gilchrest Gillmor Gilman Goode Goodlatte Gordon Goss Graham Granger Graves Green (TX) Green (WI) Greenwood Grucci Gutknecht Hall (TX) Hansen Harman Hart Hastert Hastings (WA) Hayes Hayworth Hefley Herger Hill Hilleary Hobson Hoeffel Hoekstra Holden Horn Hoyer Hulshof Hunter Hyde Isakson Israel Issa Istook Jefferson Jenkins John Johnson (CT) Johnson (IL) Johnson, Sam Jones (NC) Kanjorski Keller Kelly Kennedy (MN) Kennedy (RI) Kerns Kind (WI) King (NY) Kingston Kirk Knollenberg Kolbe LaHood Lampson Lantos Latham LaTourette Lewis (CA) Lewis (KY) Linder LoBiondo Lowey Lucas (KY) Lucas (OK) Luther Lynch Maloney (NY) Manzullo Markey Mascara Matheson McCarthy (NY) McCrery McHugh McInnis McIntyre McKeon McNulty Meehan Mica Miller, Dan Miller, Gary Miller, Jeff Moore Moran (KS) Murtha Myrick Nethercutt Ney Northup Norwood Nussle Osborne Ose Otter Oxley Pascrell Pence Peterson (MN) Peterson (PA) Petri Phelps Pickering Pitts Platts Pombo Pomeroy Portman Pryce (OH) Putnam Quinn Radanovich Ramstad Regula Rehberg Reynolds Riley Roemer Rogers (KY) Rogers (MI) Rohrabacher Ros-Lehtinen Ross Rothman Royce Ryan (WI) Ryun (KS) Sandlin Saxton Schaffer Schiff Schrock Sensenbrenner Sessions Shadegg Shaw Shays Sherman Sherwood Shimkus Shows Shuster Simmons Simpson Skeen Skelton Smith (MI) Smith (NJ) Smith (TX) Smith (WA) Souder Spratt Stearns Stenholm Sullivan Sununu Sweeney Tancredo Tanner Tauscher Tauzin Taylor (MS) Taylor (NC) Terry Thomas Thornberry Thune Thurman Tiahrt Tiberi Toomey Turner Upton Vitter Walden Walsh Wamp Watkins (OK) Watts (OK) Waxman Weiner Weldon (FL) Weldon (PA) Weller Wexler Whitfield Wicker Wilson (NM) Wilson (SC) Wolf Wynn Young (AK) Young (FL)


Members of House of Representatives who voted against:

Abercrombie Allen Baca Baird Baldacci Baldwin Barrett Becerra Blumenauer Bonior Brady (PA) Brown (FL) Brown (OH) Capps Capuano Cardin Carson (IN) Clay Clayton Clyburn Condit Conyers Costello Coyne Cummings Davis (CA) Davis (IL) DeFazio DeGette Delahunt DeLauro Dingell Doggett Doyle Duncan Eshoo Evans Farr Fattah Filner Frank Gonzalez Gutierrez Hastings (FL) Hilliard Hinchey Hinojosa Holt Honda Hooley Hostettler Houghton Inslee Jackson (IL) Jackson-Lee (TX) Johnson, E. B. Jones (OH) Kaptur Kildee Kilpatrick Kleczka Kucinich LaFalce Langevin Larsen (WA) Larson (CT) Leach Lee Levin Lewis (GA) Lipinski Lofgren Maloney (CT) Matsui McCarthy (MO) McCollum McDermott McGovern McKinney Meek (FL) Meeks (NY) Menendez Millender-McDonald Miller, George Mollohan Moran (VA) Morella Nadler Napolitano Neal Oberstar Obey Olver Owens Pallone Pastor Paul Payne Pelosi Price (NC) Rahall Rangel Reyes Rivers Rodriguez Roybal-Allard Rush Sabo Sanchez Sanders Sawyer Schakowsky Scott Serrano Slaughter Snyder Solis Stark Strickland Stupak Thompson (CA) Thompson (MS) Tierney Towns Udall (CO) Udall (NM) Velazquez Visclosky Waters Watson (CA) Watt (NC) Woolsey Wu



Tenet :lol: George Bush insulates himself from reality?
The administration didn't seriously entertain the notion that Iraq didn't have WMD's?

"insulates himself" ****meaning Mr Bush didn't go with my Idea so his wrong****

Didn't Mr Tenet briefed congress before they voted for war!

Mr Tent had the ears of the congress and the ears of the nation.

He had a lot of time to tell the world "look they are not taking the planing for this war seriously".

The President has stated so many times his decision to invade Iraq was not a easy one to make.
 
Re: George Tenet (Former CIA Director) Says White House Never Seriously Discussed Ira

blackIpod said:
October 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the "Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq.

The resolution cited many factors to justify action:

* Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 cease fire, including interference with weapons inspectors
Click to expand...
U.S. Policy before GW took office and at all times during GW's administration, up to the time he ordered the invasion, was CONTAINMENT. That is, controlling and weakening Iraq through strict economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation and protection of parts of the population and degradation of military capabilities through the no-fly zone/patrols.

In 2001 and before, intelligence agencies noted that Saddam Hussein was effectively <u>contained</u> after the Gulf War. David Kay, former weapons inspector, admitted that the previous policy of containment – including the 1998 bombing of Iraq – destroyed any remaining infrastructure of potential WMD programs.

Responding to a question by Senator Bennet on January 24, 2001, <u>Colin Powell</u> stating the position of the Bush Administration, said the following:
<u>Senator Bennett:</u> Mr. Secretary, the U.N. sanctions on Iraq expire the beginning of June. We've had bombs dropped, we've had threats made, we've had all kinds of activity vis-a-vis Iraq in the previous administration. Now we're coming to the end. What's our level of concern about the progress of Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons programs?

<u>Secretary Powell:</u> "The <u>sanctions, as they are called, have succeeded over the last 10 years</u>, not in deterring him from moving in that direction, but from actually being able to move in that direction. <u>The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn't have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been CONTAINED</u>. And even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological and nuclear -- I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that THEY HAVE NOT BEEN TERRIBLY SUCCESSFUL. There's no question that they have some stockpiles of some of these sorts of weapons still under their control, but they have not been able to break out, they have not been able to come out with the capacity to deliver these kinds of systems or to actually have these kinds of systems that is much beyond where they were 10 years ago.

So containment, using this arms control sanctions regime, I think had been reasonably successful." [Footnote 1]

When we came into office on the 20th of January, the whole sanctions regime was collapsing in front of our eyes. Nations were bailing out on it. We lost the consensus for this kind of regime because the Iraqi regime had successfully painted us as the ones causing the suffering of the Iraqi people, when it was the regime that was causing the suffering. They had more than enough money; they just weren't spending it in the proper way. And we were getting the blame for it. <u>So reconfiguring the sanctions, I think, helps us and continues to contain the Iraqi regime</u>."​

What did Tricky Dick Cheney say about containment??? "<u>Saddam Hussein's bottled up, at this point</u>” but clearly, <u>we continue to have a fairly tough policy where the Iraqis are concerned</u>." When did Tricky Dick Cheney make that statement? - 5 days after 9-11, September 16, 2001. Footnote [2]


footnotes:

[1] http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/powell-no-wmd.htm

[2] The Vice President appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20010916.html

* Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and programs to develop such weapons, posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region"
Click to expand...

See above: <u>"The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn't have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been CONTAINED</u>. they have not been able to come out with the capacity to deliver these kinds of systems or to actually have these kinds of systems that is much beyond where they were 10 years ago."

Plainly and simply, Iraq DID NOT POSE AN IMMINENT THREAT to the United States. There was NO NEED to invade an opponent thats contained and didn't pose an imminent threat.

* Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population"
Click to expand...

Who said we're supposed to invade a nation because of brutal oppression? Didn't we say the same about the Soviet Union and China ??? Funny isn't it, those same brutally oppressed people, the Shiites, are shooting at and killing Americans.

* Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people"
Click to expand...

Ummm ..... I'm trying to think where they got that shit from ....
Do you remember ???? Didn't somebody give it to them to USE AGAINST THE IRANIANS ???? Since the people we knew Saddam to be oppressing were Shia, didn't it stand to reason in somebody's mind that the Iranians were Shia, hence, the Shia in Iraq might catch the same case the Iranians were catching ???


* Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt of former President George H. W. Bush, and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War
Click to expand...

Cuba, Venezuela and half the rest of Latin America is hostile to the U.S. Is that the criteria for an invasion ???

* Members of al-Qaida were "known to be in Iraq"
Click to expand...

GTFOH. You and Dick Cheney must be the only 2 people on the whole damn planet still saying that.

* Iraq's "continu[ing] to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations," including anti-United States terrorist organizations
Click to expand...

This is really part of the previous one, isn't it ???


QueEx
 
Re: George Tenet (Former CIA Director) Says White House Never Seriously Discussed Ira

"U.S. Policy before GW took office and at all times during GW's administration, up to the time he ordered the invasion, was CONTAINMENT "

CONTAINMENT for Saddam and then his Son's and then their son's????

Bush had his own policy to end CONTAINMENT and hang Saddam.

President Obama's CONTAINMENT policy well be to invade Iran!

President Hilary's CONTAINMENT policy will be to just attack the terrorist.

I don't hear a lot of CONTAINMENT! from Democrats.
 
Re: George Tenet (Former CIA Director) Says White House Never Seriously Discussed Ira

blackIpod said:
Bush had his own policy to end CONTAINMENT and hang Saddam.
Click to expand...
I see, to end containment. As Dick Cheney said, Saddam and Iraq were "Saddam Hussein's bottled up". 'BOTTLED UP" as in not posing a threat to the U.S. Therefore, you're saying that ending containment could only mean one thing: GW has caused all of this destruction, loss of life and fucking up our budget/economy FOR PERSONAL REASONS. :smh:

QueEx
 
Re: George Tenet (Former CIA Director) Says White House Never Seriously Discussed Ira

<font size="5"><center>George Tenet cashes in on Iraq</font size><font size="4">
The former CIA chief is earning big money from corporations
profiting off the war -- a fact not mentioned in his combative
new book or heard on his publicity blitz.</font size></center>

Salon
By Tim Shorrock
May 7, 2007

If you go by the book jacket of his new memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," George Tenet is enjoying the life of a retired government servant teaching at Georgetown University, where he was appointed to the faculty in 2004. The former CIA director played up the academic image when he kicked off the recent media blitz for his new book by doing an interview for CBS's "60 Minutes" from his spacious, book-lined office at the university. His academic salary, and the reported $4 million advance he received from publisher HarperCollins, should provide the former CIA director with more than enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his days and leave a substantial fortune to his children.

But those monies are hardly Tenet's entire income. While the swirl of publicity around his book has focused on his long debated role in allowing flawed intelligence to launch the war in Iraq, nobody is talking about his lucrative connection to that conflict ever since he resigned from the CIA in June 2004. In fact, Tenet has been earning substantial income by working for corporations that provide the U.S. government with technology, equipment and personnel used for the war in Iraq as well as the broader war on terror.

When Tenet hit the talk-show circuit last week to defend his stewardship of the CIA and his role in the run-up to the war, he did not mention that he is a director and advisor to four corporations that earn millions of dollars in revenue from contracts with U.S. intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense. Nor is it ever mentioned in his book. But according to public records, Tenet has received at least $2.3 million from those corporations in stock and other compensation. Meanwhile, one of the CIA's largest contractors gave Tenet access to a highly secured room where he could work on classified material for his book.

Tenet sits on the board of directors of L-1 Identity Solutions, a major supplier of biometric identification software used by the U.S. to monitor terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company recently acquired two of the CIA's hottest contractors for its growing intelligence outsourcing business. At the Analysis Corp. (TAC), a government contractor run by one of Tenet's closest former advisors at the CIA, Tenet is a member of an advisory board that is helping TAC expand its thriving business designing the problematic terrorist watch lists used by the National Counterterrorism Center and the State Department.

Tenet is also a director of Guidance Software, which makes forensic software used by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence to search computer hard drives and laptops for evidence used in the prosecution and tracking of suspected terrorists. And Tenet is the only American director on the board of QinetiQ, the British defense research firm that was privatized in 2003 and was, until recently, controlled by the Carlyle Group, the powerful Washington-based private equity fund. Fueled with Carlyle money, QinetiQ acquired four U.S. companies in recent years, including an intelligence contractor, Analex Inc.

By joining these companies, Tenet is following in the footsteps of thousands of other former intelligence officers who have left the CIA and other agencies and returned as contractors, often making two or three times what they made in their former jobs. Based on reporting I've done for an upcoming book, contractors are responsible for at least half of the estimated $48 billion a year the government now spends on intelligence. But exactly how much money will remain unknown: Four days before Tenet's book was published, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence decided not to release the results of a yearlong study of intelligence contracting, because disclosure of the figure, a DNI official told the New York Times, could damage national security.

That may be a real break for Tenet. Under his watch, according to former CIA officials and contractors I've interviewed, up to 60 percent of the CIA workforce has been outsourced. A spokesman for the CIA told me last week that that figure "is way off the mark," but wouldn't provide the actual figure, which he said is classified. But publication of that number could prove embarrassing to Tenet, particularly in light of his own deep involvement in the privatization of U.S. intelligence.

Despite making himself available for plenty of airtime of late, Tenet was not available for an interview with Salon, said Tina Andreadis, his publicist at HarperCollins. She referred me to Bill Harlow, Tenet's co-author and his former director of public affairs at the CIA, who said Tenet's work on corporate boards "is all a matter of public record."

Tenet's ties with contractors were underscored last week in a dispute between two groups of former CIA officials over Tenet's legacy. On April 28, six former intelligence officers wrote to Tenet, saying he shared culpability with President Bush and Vice President Cheney for "the debacle in Iraq," and suggesting he donate half the royalties from his book to Iraq war veterans and their families. All of the signatories had severed their ties to U.S. intelligence, although three of them, Phil Giraldi, Larry Johnson and Vince Cannistraro, work as consultants for news organizations, corporations and government agencies outside of intelligence.

A few days later, six recently retired officers responded. They called the first letter a "bitter, inaccurate and misleading attack" on Tenet and pointed out that it was drafted by officers who "had not served in the Agency for years." Tenet, his supporters said, "literally led the nation's counterterrorism fight." And three of its six signatories were directly involved in that fight -- as contractors. They included John Brennan of the Analysis Corp.; Cofer Black, Tenet's former counterterrorism director and vice chairman of Blackwater, the private military contractor; and Robert Richer, the former deputy director of the CIA's clandestine services. Richer recently left Blackwater to become the CEO of Total Intelligence, a new company formed with Black and other ex-CIA officials to provide intelligence services to corporations and government agencies.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/05/07/tenet_money/?source=whitelist
 
Re: George Tenet (Former CIA Director) Says White House Never Seriously Discussed Ira

ahhh why are we still having this debate? EVERYONE know that if Bush really did something illegal, the democrats would fry him alive. Lets focus on reality....

WE ARE IN IRAQ...

WE CAN'T LEAVE IRAQ UNTIL IRAQ IS READY...

THE DEMOCRATS DON'T CARE ABOUT DEFUNDING THE WAR.

THIS DEBATE IS MEANINGLESS, AND ITS A WASTE OF TIME.

THE ONLY WAY WE CAN WIN IN IRAQ IS IF WE QUIT THIS SILLY DEBATE AND UNITED AS ONE...

Can everyone on this board just grow up and face reality. I'm sick of these "shoulda's woulda's coulda's". We are in IRAQ, LIVE WITH IT. I'm sure something good would come out of this...
 
Re: George Tenet (Former CIA Director) Says White House Never Seriously Discussed Ira

I agree. End the debate. Who wants to know about mistakes anyway?
For godsakes. The only good thing that can come out of understanding
mistakes is how not to make em again. Clearly, this administration should
know its mistakes already and is a good enough at making them again.
 
Re: George Tenet (Former CIA Director) Says White House Never Seriously Discussed Ira

bump
 
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