Tenet's untenable case

It's certainly sad when an willful idiot (Bush) and craven criminal (Cheney) control the country. It's particularly pitiful on a personal level when a well-intentioned and seemingly intelligent person (George Tenet) can deny reality so petulantly and persistently in the face of overwhelming contrary facts. He said in his "60 Minutes" interview that the Bush gang was disturbingly keen on linking Hussein to 9/11, despite abundant contrary evidence. We can believe this because Richard Clarke said the same thing several years ago. Yet Tenet's recognition of this misguided obsession didn't deter him from joining the gang's effort to support a war against Iraq. He also claimed he had believable reports post-9/11 that Al-Qaeda possessed nuclear materials and was planning to use them in the US. This information justified in his mind the use of torture and he said these techniques blocked attacks. Correction: he denies that the CIA used torture, delicately preferring instead “enhanced interrogation” but the distinction is moot since waterboarding was one of the "enhanced" techniques.

Incredibly, after helping lead the country to a foolish and immoral war, this guy can still spout off about “honor” and how “intelligence” was his job, so the interviewer should just accept his assertions. Did Tenet watch Jack Nicholson's misguided Colonel in “A Few Good Men” a few times too many?

In case you forgot, Tenet sat right behind Colin Powell, the other big disappointment of this fiasco, when he presented to the UN the trumped-up argument for war against Hussein. Tenet still defends a National Intelligence Estimate that was over hyped. Someday, he will probably come to his senses and admit culpability. I hope so, for the sake of his own conscience. It will be too late, just like it was too late when the former Secretary of State Robert McNamara admitted his guilt for Vietnam. Or Tenet might simply go on believing he was right, like Kissinger, proudly and profitably and pitifully ignorant to the end of his days.

See also “Tortured Logic” for a rebuttal of the "reason" for using torture to extract information.