February 5, 2004, The More Things Change...
Another day, another opportunity for CIA Director George Tenet to savor the taste of excrement, as the Bush Administration deftly, or not so deftly as the case may be, hands off responsibility for its deliberate politicization of intelligence data in order to justify invading Iraq to the CIA and its embattled director, Clinton appointee George Tenet. Tenet, surprise surprise, defends his agency and its intelligence assessments, saying almost (I kid you not): "We report-- you decide." And that, of course, is precisely what the CIA is supposed to do.
This is an intelligence agency. Its supposed to gather facts, and advise on likely inferences to be drawn from those facts, and then report to the actual policy makers, and then shut up and await further instructions. And that, of course, is precisely what the CIA did in this case of Iraq and its weapons programs and potentials. Indeed, the CIA (and the State Department) told Acting President Cheney numerous times that his darlings of the Iraqi ex-patriot community were "unreliable" (i.e. self-serving bald-faced liars) whose reports of conditions in Iraq had to be taken with a grain of salt if not discounted entirely; ditto BTW some of the "friendly" intelligence provided by Israeli sources (jeez-- Israel wouldn't have its own interests in that region, now, would it?) Nonetheless, Acting President Cheney ordered his point-men, notably DOD Undersecretary Douglas Feith (of the neo-con hawk cabal fame) to run his own intelligence shop, and cull out all the helpful points from the reports provided by the CIA, DIA and other intelligence services.
Hence, if the CIA is to be blamed, it is to be blamed for not anticipating an (unprecedented) discarding of all information it provided that might support the policy prerogative that Acting President Cheney already had in place, and deliberately slanting information the other way, so that Cheney could not, once again, point the finger at his underlings like Tenet. One wonders, why, after Cheney himself outed Valerie Plame (or at least ordered some other schmuck to do it) why the CIA hasn't just decided to fight back viciously. But then, how would we know if it did?
The "investigatory commission" looking into this will not "report" until conveniently after the election. This commission may get run over by the 9-11 commission and the Plame investigation, I s'ppose. Is there enough space at the White House to house all these investigators?
Here's the thing: if the economy were flying along, the Iraq War were over and concluded "successfully", the "war on terror" if not safely concluded, at least having shown decisive victories in the War on TerrorTM such as OBL already in custody or dead (his timely capture right around the GOP National Convention may or may not be enough to offset Bush-Cheney's other huge negatives), and the Democrats not hellbent on nominating someone "electable", the endless deferring of these endless scandals might just work. Bush might be better served pulling a Clinton, in the sense of throwing away his play book (as opposed to not stonewalling investigations) and... not stonewall for a change.
Bush himself is probably blameless-- it goes with being clueless. Let some truth come out, get it out of the national subconsciousness, and actually try some responsible governance for a change. Because the way things are going, Mr. President, we're looking at "Like Father, Like Son" for reelection prospects.
Comments
yeah, of course there's room for all these investigators--a folder, a desk, a nameplate--voila! you have an official official.
as for Bush being blameless because he's clueless, that's right up there with the Twinkie defense--i couldn't help myelf i didn't know what was going on, i'm just a pawn of fate and all that other stuff. of course he's not president, and he probably doesn't have the brains even to understand what's going on. scary
Posted by Sarah at February 5, 2004 07:29 PM
Sarah--
Bingo. But its not about "brains"; unlike many, I actually think there is a "there" there; if you look back to Bush's earlier days (back when he had a personality and he was also drinking and doing coke), you realize, there really IS someone there. Its even theoretically possible we might have liked THAT person.
But after years of being Daddy's son, and doing bid'ness with Daddy's friends, and being told where to stand and when to smile and all that, he hasn't had to USE his brain in... decades.
So when Daddy's friends bought him the nomination, and then stole him the election, well-- it wouldn't be polite to turn 'em down, now would it? Sadly, Dick rarely clues him in to what's going on-- and even more sadly, he wouldn't be interested even if Dick did.
Posted by the talking dog at February 5, 2004 09:18 PM
heya dawg-
i think you might be wrong.
as evidenced by w's yale transcript (posted on the bark), you will clearly see that young w was never a very bright boy.
unlike geo sr. who is by all measures a smart one, all the offspring provided by babs are sorely lacking in the gray-matter department.
:-)
arf
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