BOR & McClellan spar over Scott's book

It's little wonder that I despise Bill O'Lielly as much as I do. The footage above is a great example of why. To BOR, only one person has an accurate and proper memory of anything, and that's him.

He's so full of it about what pushed the case for the War in Iraq over the top. According to O'Lielly, it was Colin Powell's speech at the U.N. That's BOR's partisan, myopic view, and it's about 1/8th accurate. I distinctly recall people like Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice (then National Security Advisor) mentioning "mushroom cloud" and "Iraq" in the same sentence, and President Bush doing the exact same thing. Just so you don't think my memory is as good as O'Reilly's, here's on clip of our esteemed president, pre-Iraq War, at his propaganda spewing best:

Anyway, here's a partial rough transcript of the top video, via C&L, of O'Reilly's (attempted) grilling of McClellan:

O'Reilly: You said they used propaganda and that is a loaded word.

McClellan: The White House Iraq group, the White House Iraq group was set up, it's a marketing arm for selling the a war. That was a specific purpose that I talked about in the book

O'Reilly: Because they fervently believed that the guy was a danger and could hand his weapons off.

McClellan: No because the President had a bigger driving motivation which was to transform the middle east.

O'Reilly: You telling me that President Bush didn't believe they had the...

McClellan: No, he did too. He believed that too.

OReilly: That's not propaganda then, that's not propaganda.

McClellan: It is when you package it all together—over sell it and over state it to the American people. That is propaganda.

Ooo - O'Reilly's pretty touchy about the "P" word, isn't he?

O'Reilly's rolling George Tenet footage doesn't exactly boost his case in this debate, either. Tenet is hardly a credible source when it comes to any sort of intelligence relating to 9/11 OR the War in Iraq.

Good on McClellan for bringing up about the White House Iraq Group and its role in pimping the Iraq War to the American people via an all-too-subservient corporate media.

I give major kudos to McClellan, Bush's former propaganda minister turned whistle blower, for appearing on State TV to spar with one of Bush's many current propaganda ministers, Bill O'Lielly.

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.

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At this point, it's beginning to sound cliché, but here's another great one by Tom Tomorrow. Our method of torture has decreased and damaged our standing around the world. And former CIA Head George Tenet's non-denial denial last week on 60 Minutes did nothing to mollify critics.

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.

A few new books of note

Former CIA Director George Tenet's book, At the Center of the Storm, is due out April 30, and from my chair it looks like a must read.

I wax and wane on whether Tenet was one of the most incompetent DCIs in history, or if he was thrown under the bus in the wake of Iraq's missing WMDs, the evidence of which Tenet so famously proclaimed to President Bush was a "slam dunk." In the end, it's probably a combination of the two, in my opinion, but that's before I've read this book. We now know that the only "slam dunk" was Tenet's butt, after the WMDs were missing like Donald Rumsfeld's public speaking career.

I rate it as a must read, and I'll get around to it this year, for sure. I'm still behind on my reading from last year, and this year I've been glacial in getting my reading off the ground, so I must get moving.

However, this will be a comeback year for me for reading, just like I was prior to the 2004 presidential campaign. In '04, I think I read something like 25 books, and almost all of them were related to the presidential campaign or politics in some way. So, at least I'm ahead of my '04 pace in terms of when I'm getting started. Now, I've just got to get moving. Part of the reason for my being slow with my reading: I subscribe to more magazines than ever (and that's not going to slow down), and I've been doing more writing than ever. (Check CMB's archives to verify that!)

Anyway, Tenet's book should be interesting. The big question for me is, what light is he going to shed on the War in Iraq that Bob Woodward, Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, etc. have not? We'll soon know.

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It looks like R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. hasn't lost his touch on how to write a trashy, piece of garbage Clinton tome. His new book, The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House, is now shipping.

Tyrrell, The American Spectator editor and founder, (that should end the question of credibility right there) has a long history of writing hateful books about the Clintons, the manuscripts of which wouldn't get past a freshman college journalism professor. His association with The Arkansas Project is also well-documented.

Not to put too fine of a point on it - Tyrrell's books have more Deep Throats than Clinton ever enjoyed in the Oval Office. [Translation - virtually all of his sources are anonymous, which is beyond the pale for authors, editors and publishers who have any journalistic standards whatsoever. Wait, Tyrrell and credibility is an oxymoron. Sorry.]

Media Matters has obtained an advanced copy of the book, and previews it Here.

After reading MM's preview of the book, one of my favorite parts is this:

Tyrrell, citing an anonymous police officer "during a September 2004 interview with anonymous interviewer" (what the hell is an anonymous interviewer?!?) Tyrrell claimed regarding Denise Rich, ex-wife of financier Marc Rich, whom Clinton pardoned shortly before he left office:

In August 2001, in an unguarded moment of conversation with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, soon to be House Minority Leader, a currently serving Capitol Hill police officer standing two feet away heard Hillary snap, Bill "f---ed" Denise. [Page 78]

This moron wrote a whole book like this? Should make for a good trashy read, but one which Repubes will sop up on a plate with a biscuit. One can imagine Ann Coulter kissing and licking the cover in breathless anticipation of reading this piece of, ahem, defecation, so she can compare it to her own Clinton tomes of crap to see how it stacks up.

Will I buy this book? Not with a gun to my head and a complimentary hundred in my hand. I will pick it up used though, probably in a year or two, when I'm in the mood to read fiction. I only talk about it here to illustrate the fact that the anti-Clinton haters are back in full force, which could more than sink Hillary's chances to be president, if for no other reason than people don't want to return to those days in the late 1990s - I strongly doubt that those feelings of fatigue about all of the Clinton hunting and bashing are gone in the minds of the American public. If that's the case, it's mission accomplished for Tyrrell.

Don't sweat it, Hill 'n Bill - at least Tyrrell is going to hell. Not a bad trade off.