Seduced:The Bush/Tenet Story
In his latest column for NewsMax (Tenet Plays Bush), John LeBoutillier, pundit, poses the question he says he's asked many time before:
Why in the world does President George W. Bush keep Clinton appointee George Tenet as director of central intelligence?
LeBoutillier cites the "total and complete disaster" of the intelligence community's record under Tenet's stewardship, to include:
Failure to prove with sufficently credible evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the war began. This failure caused our government to be incapable of rounding up sufficient allies, the way the first President Bush did in 1990-1991.[snip]We have also been unable to find even one shred of evidence of WMD.The still-unfolding flap over yellowcake uranium from Niger, the now-infamous 16 words in the State of the Union address and the White House leak story now consuming D.C.
Wow, LeBoutillier sure nailed Tenet here! The DCI has obviously been derelict in his duty, because if the President wants convincing evidence of WMDs in a country, his CIA Director had damn well better come up with some. It's not like the CIA doesn't have people who couldn't have fabricated something credible. Heck, if Jayson Blair can do it, I'd expect a CIA analyst with a Ph.D. and Photoshop to have whipped up proof that would have had France BEGGING to help us invade Iraq. You know, maybe a confidential source claiming that Iraq was working on a weapon which could destroy all cheese, worldwide. Photos of Anti-Beret Missiles. And videotapes showing Saddam vowing to render the French language obsolete in our lifetime. Stuff like that.
And man, for what we're paying David Kay, you'd think he could have "found" some evidence of WMDs. Sure, the White House can say that a vial of old botulism, a Mr Science Chemistry set, and some back-issues of Popular Mechanics with dual-use applications were "shreds," but people like me and John LeBoutillier scoff at your claims, and demand that something be found there and QUICK! (BTW, I hear that DOE has lots of nuclear stuff just lying around -- now if some of that was found in Iraq, then we'd know that President was being well served, if you get my drift.)
And if any CIA Director of mine had said that the claim of Saddam seeking yellowcake uranium in Niger was a fabrication when I told him that I wanted proof of its TRUTH, he'd be in the unemployment line before sundown. And while Tenet did take the blame for the 16-words, like LeBoutillier pointed out earlier, since we all knew the CIA Director wasn't sincere when he said it, he gets no credit from me or LeBoutillier.
And while some folks might claim that the CIA can't really be held responsible for the Vice President's office bungling the leak of Wilson's wife's name and therefore causing a scandal, all I know is that a GOOD intelligence service would share with the White House the character assisination covert ops experience it gained in the anti-Castro years, thus preventing problems like this. And geez, how many times do you have to say "Who will rid me of this troublesome Joe Wilson" before somebody takes the hint and DOES something.
So why does Bush keep Tenet around? Is it that Tenet has videotapes of a youthful Bush selling heroin to John Belushi, as has been rumored? Could it be that Laura is having an affair with the dashing DCI, and uses her influence to keep him in a job? Or is it even, as LeBoutillier hints in the first paragraph, that Tenet named a building after Bush's dad, and thus, under Yale custom, Bush, Jr. is obligated to him forever?
No, LeBoutillier reveals the real sinister reason near the end of the piece:
With such an abysmal intelligence record, we all have to wonder why Team Bush doesn't lop off Tenet's political head? The reason he doesn't may be quite simple: George Tenet is an expert – not so much in intelligence matters as he is in schmoozing and buttering up a very inexperienced president.[snip]Chief of Staff Andy Card, in a New York Times interview over the weekend, offered a rare insight into the personal relationship between the president and Director Tenet: "Mr. Card said the director took time out from the grimness of the intelligence reports to talk about a subject dear to the president. 'Baseball,' Mr. Card said.
So now we understand how the insidious Mr. Tenet works: he preys upon a naive and inexperienced young president, flattering him with insincere compliments about how good he looks landing jets on battleships, and then leads him astray with sports talk. We see the whole, ugly picture now. And it goes a little something like this:
Bush: Come in, Big George. I've got some questions I want to ask you about that Saddam guy who was behind the 9/11 attack. Like, why can't we find those atom bombs that Dick told me he was going to launch at us?
Tenet: Mr. President, that's a very good question! Wow, what a smart guy you are to have come up with it. And so good-looking too! Just the other day I saw that cutie Condi Rice writing in her diary that she is saving herself for a man like you.
Bush: Condi wrote that about me? Wow, I never knew. She always seems like she thinks I'm a dope when we're in meetings; you know, calling me a dope and throwing pencils at me and stuff.
Tenet: George, that's just how girls act when they like you.
Bush: Thanks, Big George. You are a real help to an inexperienced President like me. But I still want to know about those weapons. Dick says that you guys didn't really try to find evidence of them before the war because you aren't really my friend, and he's the only one I should trust. I don't want to believe him, but I really need some weapons to take to Show and Tell, to prove to the other kids that I wasn't making up stuff, so they'll stop laughing at me.
Tenet: Well . . .David Kay did find an old can of chili that had gone bad -- you could tell everybody that it's a biological weapon.
Bush: That's better than nothing, I guess. But if you really were my friend, Dick says that you'd do better than that. So, are you going to help me out or not?
Tenet: Speaking of helping out, did you see the baseball game the other day? The one where the one guy helped out the other guy, and then they scored some points, and hugged each other, and it was really cool?
Bush: Oh, sure! That was great, wasn't it!
Tenet: Yes, it was. I bet you'll be a famous baseball player when you grow up, George.
Bush: You really think so? That's my dream, you know. But dad says I can't be a ballplayer until I finish being President.
Tenet: Well, I have to go now. Great talking to you, Georgie. Give me a call if Karl beats you up and steals your lunch money again.
Bush: Thanks, Big George. See you tomorrow.
4:04:35 AM
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