Tenet should regret it. Does he?

And by "regret it," I mean George Tenet's entire tenure as the director of Central Intelligence.

I already wrote this morning that I'm trying to avoid a lot of press about the book so I can read it with an open mind, but that's becoming more and more difficult to do, since Tenet's book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, is setting off a firestorm in political circles in Washington.

The above clip, put together by a great political Website, Talking Points Memo, lays out in pretty good detail the president spewing a fountain of lies that Tenet was in a position to stop before they happened.

On Meet the Press yesterday, I was floored how many times Tenet said, sometimes in so many words, "I/we (the CIA) should have stopped that, but we didn't..." It makes one wonder why we even have a CIA in the first place, if all the director is going to do is say "yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes" to the president every time he wants to go to war.

I'm sure there's plenty of blame to go around surrounding the various intelligence failures surrounding 9-11 and the War in Iraq. It does seem like any Bush official who is criticized in the book is now running for cover, and they are all using Tenet as a scapegoat.

To be fair, Tenet is not the only official in the Bush administration who could have put a stop to the absurd lies that this administration knowingly used in speeches to promote war with Iraq. Condi Rice could have opened her mouth, but in hindsight, that seems ridiculous, considering the parrot she's become for President Bush these days.

My other question is, where was Colin Powell when all of this was going on? I can almost visualize the rest of the cabinet convening a war game plan while Powell is over in the corner with duct tape over his mouth, in the time-out chair.

One pattern is developing - whenever a former Bush administration official comes out with a book, with his or her version of the truth, and it reflects poorly in any way on Bush, Cheney or Condi, party operatives circle the wagons to protect Bush's already useless reputation like a mother hen protecting her young.

The latest:
Paul O'Neill
Richard Clarke
Christine Todd Whitman
George Tenet

The one person I'm waiting to hear from who used to be very high up in this administration is Powell. I get the feeling we will get a book out of him at some point, but not until Bush leaves office. And there will be others, too. Anyone out there think that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby isn't going to tell his story at some point? I'd be the first in line to buy that book. And as twisted, full of lies, distortions and half-truths as it would be, I'd buy a book by Donald Rumsfeld, too, just so I could shake my head at his ridiculousness.

(Side bar - I wonder if he would write how he talked during his tenure at the Pentagon? "Do I wish we would have planned better for post-war Iraq? Yes." and "Do I regret my open combativeness with the press corps and breathtaking hubris during my time in the Bush administration? No." On second thought, I'd probably wait until I could get a copy of a Rummy book in a used bookstore.)

In the meantime, the president trudges on, defiant and obstinate, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that we will never realize "victory" in Iraq.

The only mystery left of his presidency is just how ow Bush's ratings can go. Currently, at 28 percent (the lowest during his entire time in the White House), he has the lowest approval ratings since Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.

In the short-term, it's not likely to change much, however. Bush has shown a penchant for ignoring the polls when they don't favor him, and mercilessly pimping them when they support him.

The Tenet 60 Minutes interview

Please note: if you cannot view these YouTube videos, go to Crooks & Liars Here to view the Tenet 60 Minutes interview in two parts.

Here is the 60 Minutes George Tenet interview, in four parts. I have no idea how long it will remain up on YouTube - CBS clips have a tendency to be removed on a consistent basis.

After only watching the first couple of minutes, if your reaction is anything like mine, you will view Tenet as a combative, tragic, incompetent government bureaucrat who in many ways was caught up in the incompetence of a criminally negligent administration. Maybe that's harsh, but that's my impression before reading his book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, which I just bought yesterday and will start reading very soon, maybe tonight.

Here's Part II...

It's tough to not get angry listening to Tenet. "Have you ever seen the terrain in Tora Bora?" No, Mr. Tenet, I haven't, but one would think the greatest armed forces on the planet would have the resources and means to capture or kill bin Laden. Tenet has plenty of excuses, and his combative, defensive, intentionally ambiguous words about the CIA's torture methods are troubling, but I'm also aware that I know nothing compared to Tenet about the War on Terror. Yes, I've no doubt that extreme methods need to be used on occasion, but we're America - we aren't supposed to torture people. I don't understand why that idea is so foreign to people.

I'm not without sympathy for Tenet, but I'm convinced he believes his own lies, too; to listen to him, the CIA deserves no blame for 9-11 at all. Revolting.

Part III...

Here, Tenet has more credibility, because what he says about the administration ignoring the evidence, and twisting his "slam dunk" comment for its own PR purposes rings true, without question. I'm not basing that on partisan dislike for the Bush administration, I'm basing that on other books I've read on the subject, including Bob Woodward's State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III; Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror; and Ron Suskind's book on Paul O'Neill, The Price of Loyalty : George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill.

The footage of Colin Powell giving his speech at the U.N. is particularly painful. I remember reading in Newsweek Magazine a stunning cover story about how Powell at first refused to read what White House speech writers wrote for him to say at the U.N., saying, "this speech is bullshit." It's tragic that Tenet couldn't put a stop to Powell's speech, which, from what I've read, contained a whole pack of inconsistencies and assertions based on the flimsiest of evidence.

Part IV...

Who to believe? Tenet, or the Bush administration, about the etymology of "slam dunk"? Tough to pick one there. Someone's lying.

His defensive nature about his acceptance of the Presidential Medal of Freedom is pretty telling. It's worth repeating - he could have turned the medal down. Interesting how he justifies himself: "I was accepting the medal for the work we did in Afghanistan, not for Iraq."

Medals, and their recipients, cannot and should not discriminate.

One cannot and should not be eligible for a medal some of the time, Mr. Tenet.

A Tenet teaser for Sunday night

This is a short excerpt of a 60 Minutes interview with former CIA Director George Tenet that will air tomorrow night.

I've already written that I can't wait to read the man's book, and I'm looking forward to it more and more with each passing excerpt and story that appears about it in the press.

Tenet's book and all of the publicity surrounding it has got to be very embarrassing for the Bush White House, if for no other reason than Bush's decision to decorate him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a civilian can earn.

I guess I have to give Tenet a little credit there, then, because that gives him some cover when the administration will no doubt try to smear him. However, Tenet deserves some scorn for that, too; he didn't have to accept the award.

"Okay, you've got your medal, so mum's the word, okay?"

Tenet deserves more than a little blame for 9-11 happening on his watch. Many have called it the greatest intelligence failure in history, and I'd have to agree; the only other thing that even comes close is the attack on Pearl Harbor. But again, it will be interesting to see how the Bush White House spins that one, because it can't blame Tenet for 9-11 without Bush taking some of that same heat. It's probably not a very pleasant weekend to be around the president. Boo hoo. It's not a pleasant weekend to be in Iraq, either.

Speaking of Iraq, Tenet's take on who's responsible for another brilliant intel failure - that of Iraq's phantom WMDs - should make for good reading. There's evidence aplenty that Tenet was being leaned on to provide the "intelligence" surrounding Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction." Other books and many other former administration officials have outlined that Bush decided to go to war, then he went to find the intelligence to back up his decision. Richard Clark and Paul O'Neill have both outlined that in detail in their respective books, and Bob Woodward has done it in multiple books, pieces and interviews.

Tenet's much-anticipated book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, goes on sale Monday.

I have to get this one - it's my #1 must-read of the summer.

I'll bring you the 60 Minutes interview when I can get footage of it early next week.

New Tenet book should be a solid read

I'm putting together a list of books I want to get through this summer, and former CIA Director George Tenet's book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, will be somewhere on that list.

Tenet is a study is contradictions, in my view, especially when dealing with the run-up to the War in Iraq, as well as the 9-11 attacks. You pick those two scabs, you uncover a lot of puss. There's no question in my mind that he deserves to shoulder some of the blame for 9-11, the greatest intelligence failure in U.S. history.

As for the War in Iraq, he deserves some blame, but he also jumped on a grenade for the Bush administration. We've all heard about his mindless assertion that the intelligence proving Iraq's WMD fetish was "a slam dunk." Hell, it wasn't even a lay-up.

So, I'm very interested to read his side of the story on these two critical events and what his perspective is. I wonder if it will be a "tell-all" book of sorts, much like Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies and Ron Suskind's book on Paul O'Neill, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill. (By the way, both books are excellent - if you haven't had a chance to read them, I highly recommend both.) If Tenet's book is on par with those two, we're in for a good read, and some additional insight into the schizophrenic workings of the Bush White House.

The more I think about it, Tenet's book just vaulted to hear the top of my reading list. I'll bring you my thoughts later this summer after I've digested this much-anticipated book.

P.S. - Keep an eye on the White House's reaction to this book. If it's in the vein of Clarke's and O'Neill's, the question won't be if they'll Swiftboat Tenet, but when.

Tenet's book goes on sale April 30.