posted on April 27, 2007 09:51:31 PM new
Oh...so now we're back to that, huh?
lol
You started it, CC.
I responded in kind.
Now you're whining about every word I've used that I've never used on you?
Does that, in your mind, excuse you from starting the crap? We were going along just fine...until YOU decided to become sarcastic with me.
You got back what you gave.
Don't whine about it now.
And those other labels.....if YOU claim them that is your choice. I haven't and didn't in this thread call you any of them.
What I see is you're embarrassed because you tried to 'call me out' on the exact same behavior you gave me first.
tsk tsk tsk
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on April 28, 2007 05:19:33 AM new
Linda, Embarrassed? Not me. I admitted my mistake in misreading your post, which mature people do. I don't write intentionally cruel things. You, of all people, called me uncivil. Just pointing out some of the cruel words you use all the time to demonstrate the irony in that accusation. My remark, though sarcastic, was far from cruel. Your over reaction indicates I may have hit a nerve.
posted on April 28, 2007 02:15:08 PM new
"Boy you sure can make a mountain out of a mole hill, CC."
Linda--You are the one who went ballistic. Reread the posts and you will see.
"Imo, all this has been because, once AGAIN, you CAN'T answer a question I put to you."
First of all, I do not have to answer any of your questions, but usually do if I am able. Secondly, being the polite person that I am, I explained to you why I didn't answer this question. Re-read the posts and you will see.
posted on April 28, 2007 03:03:43 PM newAfter FIVE attacks during clintons admin...and NOTHING was done....even when our WAR SHIP was bombed....
Something was done. The Republicans were to busy trying to impeach Bill for a BJ.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on April 28, 2007 03:13:58 PM newAfter all....Bush didn't even take possession of the WH until the 20th. How fast do you expect them to 'get right into the meat of ALL the thousands of issues an admin. faces when they first walk in the door? lol
Funny Bush can sit down with members of his proposed cabinet to draw up plans on removing Saddam after Bush wins the 2000 election, but he can't discuss anything else prior to him taking office.
In case you do not remember Linda, Bush met with Clinton in late 2000 for transition meetings.
Getting right into things when you take control of an office is what a good leader does. A good leader doesn't brush a side a daily brief in which it reads - Bin Laden determined to strike the US. Bush had eight months to prepare and failed to do so. National security was not the priority for Bush that you make it out to be.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on April 28, 2007 03:21:18 PM new
linduh did say, ""After all....Bush didn't even take possession of the WH until the 20th. How fast do you expect them to 'get right into the meat of ALL the thousands of issues an admin. faces when they first walk in the door? lol""
However, she did expect the Democrats to accomplish everything they said in 100 days.
WHAT A DOUBLE STANDARD!
And, actually, they did accomplish a LOT more than bushit did.
posted on April 28, 2007 03:30:52 PM new
In a September 25 discussion with the New York Post editorial board, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice purported to debunk former President Bill Clinton's recent assertion that the Bush administration failed to adequately address the growing terrorism threat during the eight months prior to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But Rice's counter-arguments -- that the Bush White House "was at least as aggressive as" the Clinton administration, that counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke was not demoted, and that the White House did not receive a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy from the outgoing Clinton national security team -- do not stand up to scrutiny. Nonetheless, news outlets such as the Associated Press and CNN have reported her remarks without challenge.
On the September 24 edition of Fox News Sunday, Fox Broadcasting Co. aired a taped interview between host Chris Wallace and Clinton, which included a contentious exchange regarding his administration's record on terrorism. During this discussion, Clinton conceded that he "tried and failed" to stop Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but noted that the Bush administration "had eight months to try; they did not try." Clinton further stated, "When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted."
In a September 26 article, New York Post correspondent Ian Bishop recounted Rice's comments to the newspaper the previous day:
"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false -- and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," Rice said during a wide-ranging meeting with Post editors and reporters.
"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice added.
The secretary of state also sharply disputed Clinton's claim that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for the incoming Bush team during the presidential transition in 2001.
"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice responded during the hourlong session.
[...]
"I would just suggest that you go back and read the 9/11 commission report on the efforts of the Bush administration in the eight months -- things like working to get an armed Predator [drone] that actually turned out to be extraordinarily important," Rice added.
She also said Clinton's claims that Richard Clarke -- the White House anti-terror guru hyped by Clinton as the country's "best guy" -- had been demoted by Bush were bogus.
"Richard Clarke was the counterterrorism czar when 9/11 happened. And he left when he did not become deputy director of homeland security, some several months later," she said.
[...]
Rice cited the final 9/11 commission report to substantiate her claims, while Clinton relied on Clarke's book as the basis for many of his rehashing the events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I think this is not a very fruitful discussion. We've been through it. The 9/11 commission has turned over every rock and we know exactly what they said," she added.
But Rice's claim that the Bush administration's efforts "in the eight months was a least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years" is rebutted by the 9-11 Commission report -- the document she cited as the basis for her rebuttal. Indeed, as the weblog Think Progress noted, the report details how the Bush White House failed to react forcefully upon receipt of the now-famous August 6, 2001, CIA memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S." The memo stated that, although the FBI had "not been able to corroborate" a 1998 report that bin Laden was seeking to "hijack a U.S. aircraft," "FBI information since that time indicate[d] patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." The 9-11 Commission stated that it "found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States" -- this despite the fact that "[m]ost of the intelligence community recognized in the summer of 2001 that the number and severity of threat reports were unprecedented."
By contrast, the 9-11 Commission report recounted the Clinton administration's far more aggressive response to a similar CIA memo received in 1998, titled "Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks." From the report:
The same day, Clarke convened a meeting of his CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] to discuss both the hijacking concern and the antiaircraft missile threat. To address the hijacking warning, the group agreed that New York airports should go to maximum security starting that weekend. They agreed to boost security at other East coast airports. The CIA agreed to distribute versions of the report to the FBI and FAA to pass to the New York Police Department and the airlines. The FAA issued a security directive on December 8, with specific requirements for more intensive air carrier screening of passengers and more oversight of the screening process, at all three New York area airports.
Rice's subsequent claim that, contrary to Clinton's assertion, Clarke was not demoted by the Bush administration is simply false. While her statement that Clarke retained his post as counterterrorism czar until after 9-11 is technically true, it ignores entirely the fact that Rice herself "downgraded" that position upon taking office, as Clarke explained in his book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror (Free Press, 2004), and as Media Matters for America noted. According to Clarke, in January 2001, Rice stripped him of principal status, a move that excluded him from the National Security Council Principals Committee. From the book:
Rice decided that the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism would also be downgraded. No longer would the Coordinator be a member of the Principals Committee. No longer would the CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] report to the Principals, but instead to a committee of Deputy Secretaries. No longer would the National Coordinator be supported by two NSC Senior Directors or have the budget review mechanism with the Associate Director of OMB [Office of Management and Budget]. [Page 230]
Clarke's exclusion from the Principals Committee had significant consequences. No longer a "principal" himself, Clarke had to lobby Rice and others in order to organize a meeting of the committee on the Al Qaeda threat. While he first requested the meeting on January 25, 2001, nearly eight months passed before it finally occurred -- a week before 9-11.
In her remarks to the Post, Rice further claimed that the Clinton national security team did not pass on a "comprehensive anti-terror strategy," as Clinton had asserted in the Fox interview. But again, the 9-11 Commission report contradicts Rice's claim. According to the report, near the end of 2000, the CIA and the National Security Council drew up policy papers that laid out anti-terrorism strategies for the succeeding administration. While the report said that the CIA/NSC memo, known as the "Blue Sky memo" was not "discussed during the transition with incoming top Bush administration officials," its ideas were nonetheless presented as options by the CIA to the Bush administration. Clarke and his staff also drafted a counterterrorism strategy memo in the waning days of the Clinton administration, which the 9-11 Commission described as "the first such comprehensive effort since the Delenda plan" -- a paper written by Clarke in 1998 laying out a strategy to "immediately eliminate any significant threat to Americans" from the "Bin Ladin network." The commission wrote that the policy paper produced by Clarke in 2000 -- titled "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al Qida [sic]: Status and Prospects" -- "reviewed the threat and the record to date, incorporated the CIA's new ideas from the Blue Sky memo, and posed several near-term policy options."
Clarke, the report noted, presented his policy paper to Rice and other senior national security staffers when he requested the principals committee meeting on Al Qaeda:
Within the first few days after Bush's inauguration, Clarke approached Rice in an effort to get her -- and the new President -- to give terrorism very high priority and to act on the agenda that he had pushed during the last few months of the previous administration. After Rice requested that all senior staff identify desirable major policy reviews or initiatives, Clarke submitted an elaborate memorandum on January 25, 2001. He attached to it his 1998 Delenda Plan and the December 2000 strategy paper. "We urgently need ... a Principals level review on the al Qida network," Clarke wrote.
Despite these clear flaws undermining Rice's rebuttal, the Post reported her comments without challenge. In turn, the Associated Press reported her claims in a September 26 article headlined "Rice Challenges Clinton on Terror Fight":
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice challenged former President Clinton's claim that he did more than many of his conservative critics to pursue al-Qaida, saying in an interview published Tuesday that the Bush administration aggressively pursued the group even before the 9/11 attacks.
"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice said during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on April 28, 2007 07:41:47 PM new
While clinton had EIGHT YEARS to do something about the five attacks.....at least he admits HE FAILED.
And he FAILED BIG TIME.
Too cowardly, after FIVE attacks to do anything. He and his lawyers too afraid of what the International community would think.
It's pathetic to see him there for eight years, blaming a President who was only there eight months and had to CLEAN up HIS messes...because he DIDN'T show the terrorists you don't attack AMERICAN interests and get away with it.
Paper tiger clinton was....all talk....no action....expect when he bombed IRAQ to rid them of the NW program. LOL LOL LOL
You know, the NW program the dems SWEAR saddam didn't have....and bash this President about.
clinton FAILED ALRIGHT......to do his JOB.
And I'll take the 9-11 commissions position over clarks. LOL
"Rice cited the final 9/11 commission report to substantiate her claims, while Clinton relied on Clarke's book as the basis for many of his rehashing the events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
[ edited by linda_K on Apr 28, 2007 07:56 PM ]
posted on April 29, 2007 04:52:23 AM new
"When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted."
Aint that the dude who hosted American Bandstand"??
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you dont want to hear the truth....dont ask the question.
posted on April 29, 2007 05:25:47 AM new"Has anyone here actually read the book?
The book will be published tomorrow. Some advanced copies have been read by reporters etc.
From New York Times
Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq
WASHINGTON, April 26 — George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.
The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.
“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.
Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.
A copy of the book was purchased at retail price in advance of publication by a reporter for The New York Times. Mr. Tenet described with sarcasm watching an episode of “Meet the Press” last September in which Mr. Cheney twice referred to Mr. Tenet’s “slam dunk” remark as the basis for the decision to go to war.
“I remember watching and thinking, ‘As if you needed me to say ‘slam dunk’ to convince you to go to war with Iraq,’ ” Mr. Tenet writes.
As violence in Iraq spiraled beginning in late 2003, Mr. Tenet writes, “rather than acknowledge responsibility, the administration’s message was: Don’t blame us. George Tenet and the C.I.A. got us into this mess.”
Mr. Tenet takes blame for the flawed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s weapons programs, calling the episode “one of the lowest moments of my seven-year tenure.” He expresses regret that the document was not more nuanced, but says there was no doubt in his mind at the time that Saddam Hussein possessed unconventional weapons. “In retrospect, we got it wrong partly because the truth was so implausible,” he writes.
Despite such sweeping indictments, Mr. Bush, who in 2004 awarded Mr. Tenet a Presidential Medal of Freedom, is portrayed personally in a largely positive light, with particular praise for the his leadership after the 2001 attacks. “He was absolutely in charge, determined, and directed,” Mr. Tenet writes of the president, whom he describes as a blunt-spoken kindred spirit.
But Mr. Tenet largely endorses the view of administration critics that Mr. Cheney and a handful of Pentagon officials, including Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith, were focused on Iraq as a threat in late 2001 and 2002 even as Mr. Tenet and the C.I.A. concentrated mostly on Al Qaeda.
Mr. Tenet describes helping to kill a planned speech by Mr. Cheney on the eve of the invasion because its claims of links between Al Qaeda and Iraq went “way beyond what the intelligence shows.”
“Mr. President, we cannot support the speech and it should not be given,” Mr. Tenet wrote that he told Mr. Bush. Mr. Cheney never delivered the remarks.
Mr. Tenet hints at some score-settling in the book. He describes in particular the extraordinary tension between him and Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, in internal debate over how the president came to say erroneously in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa.
He describes an episode in 2003, shortly after he issued a statement taking partial responsibility for that error. He said he was invited over for a Sunday afternoon, back-patio lemonade by Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state. Mr. Powell described what Mr. Tenet called “a lively debate” on Air Force One a few days before about whether the White House should continue to support Mr. Tenet as C.I.A. director.
“In the end, the president said yes, and said so publicly,” Mr. Tenet wrote. “But Colin let me know that other officials, particularly the vice president, had quite another view.”
He writes that the controversy over who was to blame for the State of the Union error was the beginning of the end of his tenure. After the finger-pointing between the White House and the C.I.A., he wrote, “My relationship with the administration was forever changed.”
Mr. Tenet also says in the book that he had been “not at all sure I wanted to accept” the Medal of Freedom. He agreed after he saw that the citation “was all about the C.I.A.’s work against terrorism, not Iraq.”
He also expresses skepticism about whether the increase in troops in Iraq will prove successful. “It may have worked more than three years ago,” he wrote. “My fear is that sectarian violence in Iraq has taken on a life of its own and that U.S. forces are becoming more and more irrelevant to the management of that violence.”
Mr. Tenet says he decided to write the memoir in part because the infamous “slam dunk” episode had come to define his tenure at C.I.A.
He gives a detailed account of the episode, which occurred during an Oval Office meeting in December 2002 when the administration was preparing to make public its case for war against Iraq.
During the meeting, the deputy C.I.A. director, John McLaughlin, unveiled a draft of a proposed public presentation that left the group unimpressed. Mr. Tenet recalls that Mr. Bush suggested that they could “add punch” by bringing in lawyers trained to argue cases before a jury.
“I told the president that strengthening the public presentation was a ‘slam dunk,’ a phrase that was later taken completely out of context,” Mr. Tenet writes. “If I had simply said, ‘I’m sure we can do better,’ I wouldn’t be writing this chapter — or maybe even this book.”
Mr. Tenet has spoken rarely in public, and never so caustically, since stepping down in July 2004.
Asked about Mr. Tenet’s assertions, a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, defended the prewar deliberations on Thursday. “The president made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein for a number of reasons, mainly the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s own actions, and only after a thorough and lengthy assessment of all available information as well as Congressional authorization,” the spokesman said.
The book recounts C.I.A. efforts to fight Al Qaeda in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks, and Mr. Tenet’s early warnings about Osama bin Laden. He contends that the urgent appeals of the C.I.A. on terrorism received a lukewarm reception at the Bush White House through most of 2001.
“The bureaucracy moved slowly,” and only after the Sept. 11 attacks was the C.I.A. given the counterterrorism powers it had requested earlier in the year.
Mr. Tenet confesses to “a black, black time” two months after the 2001 attacks when, sitting in front of his house in his favorite Adirondack chair, he “just lost it.”
“I thought about all the people who had died and what we had been through in the months since,” he writes. “What am I doing here? Why me?” Mr. Tenet gives a vigorous defense of the C.I.A.’s program to hold captured Qaeda members in secret overseas jails and to question them with harsh techniques, which he does not explicitly describe.
Mr. Tenet expresses puzzlement that, since 2001, Al Qaeda has not sent “suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half-dozen American shopping malls on any given day.”
“I do know one thing in my gut,” he writes. “Al Qaeda is here and waiting.”
posted on April 29, 2007 06:00:50 AM newat least he admits HE FAILED.
At least Clinton did admit he made mistakes. It is more than the stubborn old Bush will ever do.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on April 29, 2007 07:33:21 AM new
Right. Terrorists can only be handled with deterrence and diplomacy, Such organizations are not confined to one country. The massive bombing of Iraq and the war engineered by Bush only serves to identify the United States as another rogue state; a state that defies international laws and conventions.
posted on April 29, 2007 08:43:23 AM new
helen said: "The book will be published tomorrow."
Wrong. It was 'published' a while ago....it goes on SALE to the general public tomorrow.
"Some advanced copies have been read by reporters etc."
Yes, and as helen notes...the NYT chooses to ONLY focus on the negative about the Bush admin......NOT what the book ALSO contains....negative about the clinton admin.
Does anyone find THAT focus a surprise? lol lol I sure don't. Especially since the NYT has been anti-war and anti-Bush since he took office.
We'll get to hear what Tenet said about clinton's administration when the WA Times or other more UNBIASED MSM reports the other side. Don't expect to read it in the NYT.
===============
And imo, it's people like helen who believe diplomacy with terrorists organizations will bring about anything other than concessions on our part.
clinton knew that when negotiations weren't working with saddam when he BOMBED Iraq back in '98.
NOW we have AQ in Iraq and the SURRENDER liberals want to give them the 'concession' of our DEFEAT.
Along with old john edwards who ALSO lives in some fantasy world....where he doesn't even believe there IS a 'war on terrorism'.
Yep....let's PRETEND we can 'talk' to terrorists....let's pretend they'll change their goals....let's pretend their hatred of the west hasn't ALWAYS existed......
...that way ALL will be well.
What a CROCK.
People like helen "Terrorists can only be handled with deterrence and diplomacy",
had better WAKE and and going the REALITY of our world. Bush didn't start this ...and it's NOT going away when he leaves office.
-----
edited to add:
"Dick Clarke, who got demoted"
ANOTHER FALSEHOOD the liberals keep repeating...right along with clarke.
As has been pointed out MANY, MANY times....he was NEVER 'demoted'. He's upset he didn't get a PROMOTION, another job HE wanted. So....he's pissed. BIG DEAL.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
Ann Coulter
[ edited by linda_K on Apr 29, 2007 09:02 AM ]
"At least Clinton did admit he made mistakes. It is more than the stubborn old Bush will ever do."
President Bush ALSO admitted mistakes have been made. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?
Hindsight is wonderful for every human alive. Always something that could have been done different with 20/20 hindsight.
So....AGAIN, ld, you are WRONG.
I swear, if you liberals would EVER read anything other than your liberal anti-Bush, anti war, BIASED print....you might actually stop repeating all these FALSEHOODS.
Makes you look SO ignorant....as you ARE.
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on April 29, 2007 09:09:10 AM new
"I swear, if you liberals would EVER read anything other than your liberal anti-Bush, anti war, BIASED print....you might actually stop repeating all these FALSEHOODS.
Makes you look SO ignorant....as you ARE."
I swear, if you neocons would EVER read anything other than your conservative, pro-Bush, pro-war BIASED print....you might actually stop repeating all these FALSEHOODS.
posted on April 29, 2007 09:15:00 AM new
The New York Times and I used the word "publish" correctly, Linda. The meaning of the word publish includes printing and disseminating to the public.
posted on April 29, 2007 11:54:27 AM newRice Suggests Former CIA Director's 'Slam Dunk' Comment Was Clear Idea
Sunday, April 29, 2007
WASHINGTON — Former CIA Director George Tenet may go easy on President Bush in his new book, but he is very critical of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
In the book titled "At the Center of the Storm" out Monday, Tenet writes that the Bush administration was in a rush to take down Saddam Hussein and stretch intelligence to justify the action.
Tenet also claims that he told Rice in the summer before Sept. 11, 2001, that a significant terrorist strike on the United States was in the works.
He defends his now famous line that pre-war intelligence on Iraq was a "slam dunk," saying the remark was taken out of context "and has haunted me ever since it first appeared in Bob Woodward's book 'Plan of Attack.'"
"Woodward quotes the president in his book as saying that my 'slam dunk' comment was a very important moment. I truly doubt President Bush had any better recollection of the comment than I did. Nor will I ever believe it shaped his view about either the legitimacy or the timing of waging war.
... 'Slam dunk,' [Woodward] said, 'was the basis of this incredibly critical decision the president and his war Cabinet were making on, do we invade Iraq?'" Tenet wrote.
==
Related
Stories
Former CIA Director George Tenet: Al Qaeda is in America
Former CIA Director George Tenet Defends Aggressive Interrogation Tactics
==
"I have another two-word reaction to that statement. The first word is 'bull,'" he continued.
But that's not how then-National Security Adviser Rice sees it, saying Sunday morning that "slam dunk" is a pretty clear concept.
"When George said 'slam dunk,' everybody understood that he believed that the intelligence was strong. We all believed the intelligence was strong."
"The sad fact of how all of this has gotten talked about is that there was a problem with intelligence, but it wasn't just a problem with intelligence in the United States. It was an intelligence problem worldwide. Services across the world thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," Rice told CBS' "Face the Nation."
Michael Scheuer, the man who headed the CIA unit responsible for tracking Usama bin Laden criticized his former boss on Sunday, accusing Tenet of trying to blame others and excuse himself for the failings of Sept. 11 and Iraq.
"I think what he's saying is the agency was right, and he didn't have the courage to resign and tell the American people that, which ought to cast doubt on what he said the agency knew and didn't know before 9/11," he said.
National Security Council Director for Iraq Brett McGurk told FOX News that weapons of mass destruction were only part of the reason for going to war there.
"Look at the Senate resolution that was passed in October 2002. There were 23 'whereas' clauses" listing the reasons for going to war, he said.
"There's a lot of looking back in the rear view mirror. Gen. Petraeus is looking over the hood," McGurk said of the current commander leading operations in Iraq.
Rice added that reasons for war included Saddam Hussein's subverting sanctions, stealing from the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program and terrorizing his own people.
"The Iraqi people were living under draconian sanctions that were making life more difficult even as Saddam Hussein was putting more and more people in mass graves," Rice said, adding that the administration decided to go after Hussein when it had a good chance for success.
"The question of imminence isn't whether or not somebody is going to strike tomorrow. It's whether you believe you're in a stronger position today to deal with the threat or whether you're going to be in a stronger position tomorrow. And it was the president's assessment that the situation in Iraq was getting worse from our point of view.
Despite his criticism, in the new book, Tenet does praise the use of aggressive interrogation tactics used on captured Al Qaeda suspects, saying they have helped to break up terror plots in the United States and around the world.
============
FOX News' Julie Kirtz contributed to this report.
======
But oh how the liberals LOVE rewriting history. LOL LOL LOL
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on April 29, 2007 12:01:49 PM new
LOL....learned something new from YOU helen????
Thanks for the laugh.
My son is a book publisher....and he has absolutely NOTHING to do with SELLING them nor distributing them.
Perhaps you have something to learn.
---------
CC - I often post rebuttals to the FALSE info. you liberals distribute here.
I have YET to see any liberal prove me wrong. You all just usually RUN away....all of a sudden you're busy with something else.
I'm not talking about disagreeing with my or their OPINIONS....I'm talking about actual FACTS.
Not consiparcy stories either..lol lol lol...actual FACTS.
And it does appear that the ONLY MSM that puts out the FACTS are the conservative sites who are on AMERICA'S side....not like liberals who side with our known enemies.
NOW....please feel free anytime you find me making an UNFACTUAL statement, to speak up....and we'll discuss it.
Meanwhile I have full plans to do so each and EVERY time I see one of your liberals here ONLY presenting ONE SIDE of any issue....or actually stating out and out FALSEHOODS.
You'll adjust...I'm sure.
[ edited by linda_K on Apr 29, 2007 12:09 PM ]
posted on April 29, 2007 12:31:51 PM new
"NOW....please feel free anytime you find me making an UNFACTUAL statement, to speak up....and we'll discuss it."
How's this for starters?
"And it does appear that the ONLY MSM that puts out the FACTS are the conservative sites who are on AMERICA'S side....not like liberals who side with our known enemies."
posted on April 29, 2007 12:38:34 PM new
"I have YET to see any liberal prove me wrong"
And you never will. Helen, Logansdad and I have posted excerpts from Tenet's book that you say is not PROOF of anything. We have quoted from the 911 Commission many facts that rebut what Condoleeza Rice initially said, which you completely ignore. Yet, you want me to accept as fact some Washington Times op-ed piece? Not happening.
posted on April 29, 2007 12:40:48 PM new
ROFLOL.....TOO FUNNY.....
sure CC I'll be more than happy to address that statement I made....as SOON as YOU answer the question I have asked you AT LEAST THREE TIMES.....
You're continuing answer whenever **I** as YOU a question is:
"I don't HAVE to answer your questions."
I have become used to your odd way of only wanting to ASK questions....make false accusations but then go into your 'I don't HAVE to' mode. Typical liberal....
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
want to answer WHY you /believe/swear the clinton administration gave the Bush admin. the 'delenta plan'....and why YOU would expect THEM to follow it when even the clinton admin. DIDN'T????
Or am I just going to get your more and more common answer to ANY question I pose to you "I don't HAVE TO answer you."
posted on April 29, 2007 12:55:12 PM new
LOL....another laugh you've provided for me.
Speaking of op-ed pieces.
Sure I post them. Believe them or not. But the WA TIMES prints NEWS....not op-ed pieces....and I often post THOSE.
But the part that makes me laugh so hard....is you BELIEVE and take a full value posts from ld and others who don't even post WHERE their partial articles came from, WHO wrote them....NOTHING.
LOL Those and your comment about 'waco's' intelligent posts....says a LOT to me about what you'll believe.....vs what the FACTS actually are.
And speaking of the 9-11 commission.....**I** posted their comments on the 'delenta plan'. You know, the one YOU CLAIM this admin. was given. But you haven't been able to PROVE it was RECEIVED in time for Rice to have used it.
I think you're just confused....as most liberals here are....about FACTS and CLAIMS.
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on April 29, 2007 12:58:00 PM new
The queen of LIES will NEVER EVER ADMIT SHE IS BEATEN AND BEATEN BADLY WHILE HER WORDS ARE PROVEN AS LIES ALMOST DAILY.
If the fool new-cons only knew what harm they and Bush are doing to the Republican party.
Helen, I laughed at your little Witch running back and forth describing LIAR_K.
THE REPUBLICANS NOW HAVE THE BLOOD OF OUR DEAD AND WOUNDED TROOPS ON THEIR HANDS.
