Merlin and His Apprentices:The Real "Slam Dunk"

The American Thinker ^ | 4/29/07 | Clarice Feldman

[the Real fifi]

It's a familiar scene: A Clinton holdover writes a book attacking the Bush administration and is paraded around through the network newsrooms for partisan fun and his own profit. I'm talking about George Tenet's soon-to-be released book attacking Cheney and Rice, absolving himself of all error and making a puzzling claim about what he meant when he said the Iraqi WMD program was a "slam dunk" basis for justifying war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

[the Real fifi]

The only "slam dunk" is the fact that under Tenet the CIA's WMD monitoring program was a joke and Operation Merlin an act of stupifying idiocy.

[Laverne]

Yet another good article by Clarice Feldman. I’m sensing a lot of backlash on Tenant for this book and he sounds like a big baby in the previews of his interview.

[jwparkerjr]

I don’t it think it mattered if Saddam had WMD’s or not. What mattered was he thought he did and therefore he thought he had the ability to stand off the rest of the world. I’m convinced his underlings knew better than to admit they couldn’t produce WMD’s after all the time and money he had let them devote to the project. They knew he would have them, and their family and their family pets, killed if he ever found out all they had to show for the effort was piles of WMD precursors. So, in a very understandable response they simply said ‘yes’ and did ‘no’. My guess he was the most surprised person in Iraq when we moved and his ‘military’ was powerless to stop it.

The CIA was as clueless as he was. The ruse had to be good to fool Saddam, and the CIA fell for it too.

We live in a world where neither political party wants to hold anyone responsible for failure. It’s the grown up version of little league baseball where no score is kept and everyone gets a trophy. No one has ever been called to task for all the slip ups that let 9-11 catch us by surprise. People in every branch of government and intelligence knew something was up, but thanks to the Clinton Wall of Separation no one could put two and two together and come up with the obvious answer.

[Cicero]

Clarice Feldman is a very smart lady (if one may say such a politically incorrect thing these days).

I doubt whether any of these truths will get out into general knowledge, however. The Bush administration has done, and is doing, NOTHING to get the facts out, and the MSM certainly will back everything Tenet says. Every lie will be taken up and amplified by them.

[the Real fifi]

I think no matter how hard the Administration ties it cannot get its message out thru the Dem-Media..Do your best to help.

[Numbers Guy]

Bush should have fired Tenet after 9/11. He was too loyal to an incompetent. Tenet, instead of returning that loyalty, is spinning his experiences in an attempt to garner favor from the MSM.

Bush made a major error in not holding Tenet accountable for his mistakes.

[no_lectures_please]

Clarice bump!

[PerConPat]

What mattered was he thought he did and therefore he thought he had the ability to stand off the rest of the world.

Yes, either Saddam was fooled by his underlings or he was bluffing the world by giving the impression that he had access to a modern arsenal of WMD. Either way, in the absence of a competent intelligence community and after the shock of 9/11/'01, the POTUS basically reacted in the only way possible, whether one agrees with the amount of force used, to responsibly protect this nation.

Weakling leaders such as Tenet, and there are many in both political parties, will not be held accountable by a society that has grown fat and dumb on the good life. Dubya, Cheney, and Rumsfeld made mistakes; but they had the courage to at last confront a dire threat that had been festering for the four previous administrations and has infected the world for many centuries. I believe that history will be kinder to Bush 43 than a spoiled, hedonistic majority of the populace and their drovers could ever be.

[CyberAnt]

Bill Kristol said as much, “he sounds like a baby whining”.

[Freee-dame]

The CIA was as clueless as he was. The ruse had to be good to fool Saddam, and the CIA fell for it too.

60 Minutes is now rehashing so many lies and half-truths (AKA lies). I heard less than two minutes while passing by the TV and had to come back to FReerepublic and turn on Lee Greenwood singing "God Bless the USA."

[the Real fifi]

Tenet also flat made up a conversation with Richard Perle which never happened.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/593daqmw.asp