Well Tenet got in his max retirement time, right? I'd love to see what his portfolio looks like...if you could find it.

In his new act of ratting out GW's crew I figure Tenet is, like the old RCA dog, still hearing his master's voice. If one only knew how GW got that black eye in 2001, one should bet if wasn’t from choking on a peanut and passing out. It very likely was a reward for being snookered, in my opinion.

Got any idea what possibility I'm referring to LJ?

Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.

William James

I agree that Tenant had many failings, but he was also operating in an extraordinary environment where the leaders of the administration he worked for considered the Iraq War a manifest destiny, with that end justifying any means.

As for the book, better late than never. Perhaps it will serve to mitigate some of the continuing disasters, or even prevent new ones. Perhaps it will inspire Colin Powell or others still in the administration or Pentagon to speak up or resign in protest.

He should think about giving the medal back.

Tenet had many failings, but he was also operating in an extraordinary environment where the leaders of the administration he worked for considered the Iraq War a manifest destiny, with that end justifying any means.

As for the book, better late than never. Perhaps it will serve to mitigate some of the continuing disasters, or even prevent new ones. Perhaps it will inspire Colin Powell or others still in the administration or Pentagon to speak up or resign in protest.

He should give the medal to one of the families of our fallen troops.

He should give the medal to one of the families of our fallen troops.

He should not dishonor any of the fallen in that way.  He really should imbed it in a cow turd, cover it with plastic, and send it to Crawford, Texas after it has had enough time to "ripen" when the shrub or his brain-dead wife open it. 

Of course if they see a package from him they should know better, and it will probably by blown up by the SS (that would be the Secret Service). 

It would truly be an honorable act for him to return the medal, face to face with that apalling coward who is our fake commander-in-chief.  Wow!  What a fantasy!  Things like that just don't happen these days, do they?

Jan

Tenet is no winner.  But let's get the dirt out.

What?

Jan

He's been angrier and angrier as he saw himself being essentially made the fall guy on WMD in Iraq.

If Tenet wasn’t shoveling shit then, he sure is now. To act as if he was unaware of how the bona fides of the CIA and its intelligence was being cooked is just a bit incredulous now. If he was unaware, he is an inept idiot.

We all struggle for redemption. Expressed in Christian terms, forgiveness is only available with the acknowledgment of sin. So, let's wait and see whether Tenet acknowledges his own culpability in this whole matter. If he does, then I will be thankful that someone from this administration was capable of learning and capable of regret.

I understand that it has taken a long time. I know that this is a book deal. I'm not asking that he be given another medal or that he ever be considered for another assignment. I'm just saying that I have done things that I regret and my hope is that redemption is always available...if you're willing to seek it genuinely and in a spirit of humility.

I understand the sentiment of your comment, Clay, but tell me, how many thousands died as a result of your regretted actions? It seems to me that the cost of Tenets lack of what it takes to be a man is much too high for him to have any realistic chance for redemption - at least in this life.

Hoppy in Sacramento

Let Tenet keep his medal. I hope his book makes a ton of money. This will underline in history what George Tenet is all about: a self-serving narcissist who chose personal enrichment over country at a time when the choice meant something. The best that can be said about him is that he's no longer in government.

George Tenet and his Gold piece, for his involvement in the spilling of innocent blood, reminds me of another betrayal

(Matthew 27:3-5) 3 Then Judas, who betrayed him, seeing he had been condemned, felt remorse and turned the thirty silver pieces back to the chief priests and older men, 4 saying: “I sinned when I betrayed righteous blood.” They said: “What is that to us? You must see to that!” 5 So he threw the silver pieces into the temple and withdrew, and went off and hanged himself.

Let us not forget that President Bill Clinton also got some really righteous "intel" from George "Can't Identify Anything" Tenet, like the bombing co-ordinates for the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Then, too, I remember well when Bogus Bill tried to bomb "suspected" Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and several cruise missles ended up blasting some Pakistani villages, instead. "Gee," I reflected at the time: "it seems bad enough when you can't hit the target you aim at, but when you can't even hit the country you aim at, well what does that say about why no one in their right mind should let you have anything to do with explosive ordnance and/or delivery systems for the same?

I go all the way back to Francis Gary "U-2" Powers and the Bay of Pigs. I also spent eighteen months in the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-1972), so you'll pardon me for my long-held belief that we should just abolish the C.I.A. as a monumental waste of taxpayer dollars. I didn't need any C.I.A. to clue me in on Deputy Dubya Bush's monumental incompetence and mendacity, and neither did millions of other reasonably intelligent and informed people world-wide. What? Somebody considered this brain-dead bumpkin and his Rasputins Cheney and Rove a secret or something?

Anyway, either our spooks don't know shit from Shinola, or even when occasionally they do, the idiot Presidents who employ them don't want to hear what they know anyway. So why bother? The C.I.A. has had many directors every bit as bad or worse than George Tenet and will have many more, too, if we foolishly allow this bureaucratic backwater to continue as a national treasure for practically every nation on earth except ours.

If this book and round of media publicity it gets brings our forces in Iraq home earlier by a single day I'll thank Tenet for that:  not because it redeems him, redemption isn't my department, but because it may save a few of them. 

If it strengthens the congressional opposition to the war the way Gonzales' testimony has discredited the Department of Justice's behavior and led conservative Senators to call for his resignation, I'll thank him for that, too.

If it moves the country further toward demanding that Bush and Cheney be impeached, I'll be grateful.  Any nail in the coffin of this corrupt regime pounded in by any hammer wielded by any hand is useful. 

Having said that, nothing would make a better statement than Tenet returning the Medal.  It would be a superb gesture if he announced he was doing so on 60 minutes.  Lacking that initiative, I wonder if any of those interviewing him across the next several weeks will ask him if he plans on doing this.

aMike

Read my comment, Hoppy. If Tenent acknowledges that he went along and that thousands died as a result. If he lays bare the lie for all to see, don't you think he is at least on the path? It's redemption if (1) he's honest that he screwed up big time and (2) by exposing what happened, he empowers us to begin to repair the problem and to not repeat it. Let's wait and read the book.

I understand you are angry with Tenent. I am too. But the world hasn't a prayer if we are dominated by our anger. Regarding your statement that he "[has behaved too badly] to have any realistic chance for redemption..." Where do you draw the line and conclude that someone shouldn't even bother to seek redemption? What kind of world will we have if trying to change your life for the better is something that no one should even bother with? Maybe we should just make all prison sentences life terms then, right?

If this is just a money making book deal and Tenent is posturing to make himself look good, then forget him.

kent roberts,horsecrap,no one struggles with anything,i`m not struggling from 3 tours in nam,everything is great,everybody ought to go to war.

"I am outraged by this Johnny-come-lately jerk off"

Larry,

It's one word, not two - jerk-off.

Gotta keep the facts straight for his next commendation.

That's not why he's pissed. What steams him is the White House and its minions blaming everything on "bad intelligence work."

I'd say more the political pressure than inherent ineptitude.

We have to distinguish between employees and management at CIA. Management responds to pressure too easily would be the diagnosis. No cure I can see, given that it seems unworkable to design US intel as an independent agency like SEC or such, and even those give way to pressure.

So we're stuck with assigning responsibility where it belongs--US administrations, i.e. presidents and their cabinets. It was not CIA management that decided to enter Afghanistan with only CIA and Special Forces, with limited resorces, and with those then stripped for the Iraq adventure.

Reading Cobra I was struck by how the author could complain about lack of help from the Pentagon and still call Bush supportive. That was wishful thinking on his part; the failures of Cobra and Iraq are not those of CIA.

I agree about your assessment of why he left Bush out. Because he knows Cheney and Rumsy were the leaders of this campaign, and it was Bush that they used as the jester's face to pull it off. So while people hate Bush, they ignore the hand up his ass.

Unfortunately, Tenet is not the first DCI that played White House politics to have access. The general pattern, with limited exceptions, goes back to the first national intelligence chief, "Wild Bill" Donovan of the WWII OSS. Donovan's organization was only loosely under the Joint Chiefs; the formal Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was created by the same National Security Act of 1947 that created the CIA.

Before WWII, the White House staff was small enough that direct Presidential access was fairly practical for senior government officials. Things began to change in WWII, and Donovan, a prominent Republican, created the best presentation graphics shop in wartime DC, so FDR liked to see his briefings. The pattern of tailoring intelligence delivery to appeal to Presidential tastes has been sometimes useful, but more often a problem, since Donovan. The 9/11 Commission Report actually makes reasonable reference to this problem, but it doesn't come across as a critical issue.

I have no simple answer. The British have a well-established tradition of their senior intelligence directors having direct access to the Monarch and the PM, but they have the advantage of a system that dates back to Sir Francis Walsingham about 1585, and has become custom.

There was so much intelligence transition in the Truman administration that it's hard to draw any real conclusions. Eisenhower, the product of a top-level military staff system, probably had the best handle on national intelligence and the strongest National Security Council system. Bush 41, with his experience as DCI, probably was next best.

The Kennedy Administration overdid their "New Look", sweeping out some things that Eisenhower had gotten working fairly well. Allen Dulles, the incoming DCI, was something of a loose cannon, but Eisenhower had him fairly well controlled. Soon after the change of Administrations, Dulles introduced the predecessor of today's President's Daily Brief, the President's Intelligence Checklist (aka pickle), and reestablished Donovan's attention-catching briefings. McGeorge Bundy, Dean Rusk, and Robert McNamara were not conducive to managing intelligence.

When Dulles was fired over the Bay of Pigs, John McCone, the only significant Republican in the Kennedy inner circle and one of the strongest DCIs, got the process under better analytical control. The practical need for showmanship, however, caused him to resign under LBJ, with whom McCone felt little rapport. Since then, DCIs have walked a delicate line between what the President wants to hear and how the President wants information presented. Bush 41, with his experience at DCI, did get more control than most other presidents. There is a real damned if you do, damned if you don't situation: a DCI (DNI) that has no unfiltered access is in no position to get across critical information that the political staff doesn't want heard. A DCI that passes the political staff may do so only by putting forth the party line.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Thanks.