1 Boring Old Man

^{Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.}

_{Burnt Norton, T.S. Eliot}

I wrote below that I would like to know the truth about Iraq at all costs, and would like for us to create an environment that will optimize its emergence – even if it means letting people off the hook for going along with the madness that got us into the war. I’ve been thinking a lot about why I said that, and if I really believe it. Tenet was supposed to be an Intelligence Officer, not a politician. It’s clear that he did not stick to his job description. He said yesterday that he never heard the Administration seriously discuss whether or not going to war with Iraq was a good idea. He only heard them talk about how to do it. I believe him. That’s consistent with what Paul Oniell said, what Richard Clarks said, what the neocons in the Project for a New American Century wrote. But it’s not what the Intelligence said. And Tenet’s job was Intelligence.

My first medical training program was in Internal Medicine under a truly remarkable Chairman. He taught us that the most important thing about being a physician is knowing when you didn’t know something. He used to say, "When you present a case, tell me what you don’t know. Don’t show off and tell me what you do know. How else will I know what to teach you?" And he taught a corollary, the highest virtue is to know when you’re wrong and admit it – "You can’t learn from mistakes if you don’t admit that you made them." That second part is the hardest. Every physician who has been in the trenches has made mistakes, sometimes fatal mistakes. Those things haunt us all, but better to be haunted and learn, than to be in denial and make the same mistake again. Human beings are not good at being fallible.

I’ve always thought that one of the great figures of our times was John Dean. Somehow, when the Watergate Affair became a big deal, he found it in himself to wake up and tell the truth. As I recall, he did not tell the story in a self protective way when he testified. He told it straight, including his part. That’s a truly remarkable thing to have done. Tenet was trying to admit his errors, but he couldn’t quite bring it off. He was too defensive, too much the victim, made too many excuses. If he’d only said "I got caught up in the politics, and lost sight of my responsibility. I’m ashamed of that. I suppose I can look back and see why it happened, but that doesn’t let me off the hook." But he didn’t say that.

But as much as I want the people who were complicit with this debacle to heed the words of my old Chairman, it’s not happening. Self justification is part of the human psyche, a big part. I often marvel that humility and a willingness to be wrong is one of the most desirable traits in "others." We are drawn to people who exhibit such qualities. Yet it is one of the most difficult traits to develop in one’s self. Seems like it ought to be easier.

We’re sure not going to get that kind of thing from George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condaleeza Rice, or Karl Rove – ever. We’ve all witnessed Alberto Gonzales saying "I take full responsibility" and "I didn’t do anything wrong." He’s fond of the passive voice too – "mistakes were made." I don’t guess we’re going to hear "I was wrong" from the Attorney General either.

Frankly, I hope we do finally run across some John Deans – people who are introspective enough to break free of their frame of reference and ‘get it’ that something terrible has happened here, and they’ve been a part of it. But barring that, I’ll settle for people simply telling the truth – even if it’s filled with self-justifying excuses and disavowals of responsibility, because we badly need for everyone to see how all of this has been played out. It’s time future I’m thinking about. It’s the voter who supported Bush, particularly the second time, that I’m thinking about. If that voter doesn’t have the information available to look inside at why he/she overlooked the obvious, they will vote the same way again. I don’t mind conservative, but I do mind irresponsible ideological voting when the ideological candidate is incompetent and malevolent. The only thing I can think of that might change that is confrontation with the truth, no matter what it takes to get it on the table…

GOP’s Base Helps Keep Unity on Iraq.

With public opinion tilting firmly toward ending U.S. involvement in the war in Iraq, Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (R-Md.) might have expected praise for his votes that would start to bring the troops home. Instead, at town hall meetings on the Eastern Shore, the former Marine and Vietnam combat veteran has been called a coward and a traitor.

After Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) voted for a nonbinding resolution opposing President Bush’s troop increases, reaction in his district was so furious that local GOP officials all but invited a primary challenge to the reliable conservative. Inglis responded with multiple mailings to his constituents, fence-mending efforts and a video message on his House Web site pleading his case. On subsequent Iraq votes, he has not strayed from the Republican fold.

The experiences of the few Republicans to vote against the war help explain the remarkable unity that the party has maintained in Washington behind an unpopular president. Just four Republicans — two in the House, two in the Senate — voted last week for a $124 billion war funding bill that would require troop withdrawals to begin by Oct. 1, legislation that Bush has vowed to veto…

The Bush Administration, by design, appealed to the Conservative element in our society who hate "liberals" – still hate and hippies and communists and drugs and rock and roll and cultural diversity and gays and who knows what from the era of the 1960’s. They have been groomed to see the other side as libertines dead set on destroying the family and the church and decency and marriage and patriotism and the Constitution and the pledge allegiance to the flag who knows what else. I don’t think it has much to do with the war in Iraq. I think it has to do with fear and what used to be called "the culture wars." We see such people as destroying our country by supporting the Administration. They see "us" as destroying the very fabric of American Culture.

I got so into what I was saying about the ultimate "blame" for the war when I was writing the post about Tenet, I forget to mention the most striking thing from the whole interview! Tenet said that on September 12th, 2001 on his way to brief President Bush about al Qaeda’s involvement in the Twin Trade Tower attack, he ran into Richard Perle in the White House. Perle said something like "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday." If you don’t know who Richard Perle is – he’s the mother of all neoconservatives. He’s still at it [Perle], going from place to place defending the neoconservative foreign policy and narrating a PBS Special. The neocons are already countering Tenet’s claim in the Weekly Standard. William Kristol says that Perle was in France that day, unable to get a flight to the States and "… Perle in any case categorically denies to THE WEEKLY STANDARD ever having said any such thing to Tenet, while coming out of the White House or anywhere else."

Well, we can’t fault the interviewer for being too soft. He asked hard questions. But I liked Tenet a bit more than I thought I would. He was like a Street Guy – cocky, tough, I bet he had a "walk" like Travolta in Stayin’ Alive when he was a kid. I think his error was getting involved with the politics of things.

… Although CIA officers learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, you still went before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to Al Qaeda.

You showed a lack of leadership and courage in January of 2003 as the Bush Administration pushed and cajoled analysts and managers to let them make the bogus claim that Iraq was on the verge of getting its hands on uranium. You signed off on Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations. And, at his insistence, you sat behind him and visibly squandered CIA’s most precious asset – credibility.

You may now feel you were bullied and victimized but you were also one of the bullies. In the end you allowed suspect sources, like Curveball, to be used based on very limited reporting and evidence. Yet you were informed in no uncertain terms that Curveball was not reliable. You broke with CIA standard practice and insisted on voluminous evidence to refute this reporting rather than treat the information as suspect. You helped set the bar very low for reporting that supported favored White House positions, while raising the bar astronomically high when it came to raw intelligence that did not support the case for war being hawked by the president and vice president.

It now turns out that you were the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community – a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy shielded by a genial personality. Decisions were made, you were in charge, but you have no idea how decisions were made even though you were in charge. Curiously, you focus your anger on the likes of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Condi Rice, but you decline to criticize the President.

Mr. Tenet, as head of the intelligence community, you failed to use your position of power and influence to protect the intelligence process and, more importantly, the country. What should you have done? What could you have done?

For starters, during the critical summer and fall of 2002, you could have gone to key Republicans and Democrats in the Congress and warned them of the pressure. But you remained silent. Your candor during your one-on-one with Sir Richard Dearlove, then-head of British Intelligence, of July 20, 2002 provides documentary evidence that you knew exactly what you were doing; namely, "fixing" the intelligence to the policy.

By your silence you helped build the case for war. You betrayed the CIA officers who collected the intelligence that made it clear that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat. You betrayed the analysts who tried to withstand the pressure applied by Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Most importantly and tragically, you failed to meet your obligations to the people of the United States. Instead of resigning in protest, when it could have made a difference in the public debate, you remained silent and allowed the Bush Administration to cite your participation in these deliberations to justify their decision to go to war. Your silence contributed to the willingness of the public to support the disastrous war in Iraq, which has killed more than 3300 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

If you are committed to correcting the record about your past failings then you should start by returning the Medal of Freedom you willingly received from President Bush in December 2004. You claim it was given only because of the war on terror, but you were standing next to General Tommy Franks and L. Paul Bremer, who also contributed to the disaster in Iraq. President Bush said that you "played pivotal roles in great events, and [your] efforts have made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty."

The reality of Iraq, however, has not made our nation more secure nor has the cause of human liberty been advanced. In fact, your tenure as head of the CIA has helped create a world that is more dangerous. The damage to the credibility of the CIA is serious but can eventually be repaired. Many of the U.S. soldiers maimed in the streets of Fallujah and Baghdad cannot be fixed. Many will live the rest of their lives missing limbs, blinded, mentally disabled, or physically disfigured. And the dead have passed into history.

Here’s the tragedy of George Tenet. He went along with a bunch of lunatics instead of standing up to them. What makes it supremely tragic is that if George Tenet had done what we all wish he had done, he would have been replaced in a blue second. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had the power, and the public’s attention. They were in a perfect position to bully their way into the annals of infamy. George tried to veer them some, but they weren’t having any of it, and cast him aside as a fall guy, just like they threw his agent, Valerie Plame, to the wolves. There is really only one place to put the blame here – and we’re getting there, slowly but surely. George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney are going to end up below Nixon on the history scale. And America is going to have decades of the kind of animosity the Germans lived with after World War II to contend with. Unfortunately, we’ve earned it…

Tenet Book Blames White House for "16 Words"

George Tenet told former Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in October 2002 that allegations about Iraq’s attempt to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger should immediately be removed from a speech President Bush was to give in Cincinnati. Tenet told Hadley that the intelligence was unreliable.

"Steve, take it out," the ex-CIA director writes in a new book, "At the Center of the Storm," about a conversation he had with Hadley on October 5, 2002, about the 16 words that alleged Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Niger. As deputy National Security Adviser, Hadley was also in charge of the clearance process for speeches given by White House officials. "The facts, I told him, were too much in doubt."

The 16 words in question, "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," was cited by Bush in a January 28, 2003 State of the Union address and was widely seen as the single most important element that helped convince Congress and the public to back an invasion of Iraq. However, the intelligence was wholly unreliable and based on forged documents. Tenet says that White House officials knew that and used the language anyway.

Following his conversation with Hadley, one of Tenet’s aides sent a follow-up letter to then Deputy National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Hadley, and Bush’s speechwriter Mike Gerson highlighting additional reasons the language about Iraq’s purported attempts to obtain uranium from the African country of Niger should not be used to try and convince Congress and the public that Iraq was an imminent threat, Tenet wrote in the book.

"More on why we recommend removing the sentence about [Saddam’s] procuring uranium oxide from Africa," Tenet wrote in the book, apparently quoting from a memo sent to the White House. "Three points: (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of French authorities; (2) the procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq’s nuclear ambitions…And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them the Africa story is overblown and telling them this was one of two issues where we differed with the British."

The revelation about the behind-the-scenes jockeying, as portrayed by Tenet, related to the so-called 16 words has not been previously reported. A copy of Tenet’s book was purchased by a Truthout reporter at a bookstore Saturday afternoon. The book officially goes on sale Monday. Tenet received a $4 million advance for "At the Center of the Storm," according to news reports.

George’s concern over being scapegoated is touching. But could he not have seen it coming? Not even when Rumsfeld asked him in the fall of 2002 (that is, before the war) whether he had put in a system to track how good the intelligence was compared with what would be found in Iraq? The guys I know from Queens usually can tell when they’re being set up. Maybe Tenet was naive enough to believe that the president, whom he describes as a "kindred soul," would protect him from thugs like Vice President Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, even when – as was inevitable – someone had to take the fall. Or did he perhaps actually believe the Cheney dictum that US forces would be greeted as liberators?

So now George is worried about his reputation. He tells "60 Minutes:"

"At the end of the day, the only thing you have … is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor, and when you don’t have that anymore, well, there you go."

I immediately thought back to former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s response when he was asked if he regretted the lies he told at the UN on February 5, 2003. Powell said he regretted that speech because it was "a blot on my record." So we’ve got ruined reputations and blots on records. Poor boys. What about the 3,344 American soldiers already killed in a war that could not have happened had not these poor fellows deliberately distorted the evidence and led the cheering for war? What about the more than 50,000 wounded, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose deaths can be attributed directly to the invasion and its aftermath? There are blots, and there are blots. Why is it that Tenet and Powell seem to inhabit a different planet?

Well, at least they’re talking now. It’s their conscience they have to live with. I think our imperative right now is not the people who missed the opportunity to make a stand for integrity and honor. Our focus is the Band of Thieves who took over our government at a time when all of us were vulnerable and frightened and used it for their own misguided purposes. So, I want us to create an environment where telling the truth is what matters, even at this late date. Tenet’s sin is being an egotistical politician. In the words of the Vatican, it’s Venal. We’re after the Mortal sinners right now. The truth has been so elusive, I’ll take it no matter how bad it makes someone look, no matter how belated its telling, and say, "Thanks."

Marcy Wheeler, A.K.A. emptywheel, is a Comparative Literature Ph.D. turned political sleuth. In Comparative Literature, "careful reading" of texts is the thing to do, and she’s turned those skills on the political intrigues of our times – notably the Plame Affair. Now she’s focused on the U.S. Attorney firings and the voluminous texts available as DOJ email "dumps." Right now, she’s in the middle of sleuthing out The Perplexing Case of Margaret Chiara.

Margaret Chiara [WD-MI] was one of the fired U.S. Attorneys. She was on the firing list from the start, though it’s not exactly apparent why. She wasn’t after any big Republicans. She wasn’t resisting the Bush DOJ Agendae. And from reading her emails, she actually comes across as a nice, sensible person. Why would such a person be fired?

The story starts with the resignation of Tom Heffelfinger [D-MN] last February. He was apparently on the earlier lists for firing, but resigned on his own. Most of us think it was a pre-emptive resignation in spite of his denials. He was prosecuting a Republican donor, Dr. McGuire, a C.E.O. of an insurance company who retired with an unbelievable amount of money in stock options [probably back-dated]. His replacement was the now infamous Rachel Paulose, formerly of the firm representing McGuire’s Company. So, Heffelfinger’s ouster has an explanation. But there’s something else. Heffelfinger was in charge of the Native American Issues Subcommittee of the DOJ. A lot of the targeted Attorneys were also on that committee – including Margaret Chiara, who was second in command. In addition, the staff lawyer, Leslie A. Hagen, liason between the Indian Community and the N.A.I.S. was "unfunded" after being told she would continue. When Chiara complained [meekly], she was told she was being fired.

1. Native Americans and the USA Purge, Part One
2. Native Americans and the USA Purge, Part Two

In a third post, I’m going to make some wildarsed speculations about what might be going on.

 

… we might be getting somewhere. Are you listening eRiposte?