america's DeepState

* arkin:

"More revealing is one of Tenet's central arguments of his book: He wants us to believe he wasn't really a part of the "administration," that even though he was director of Central Intelligence and met with the president six days a week, he didn't really "know" what was going on in the inner circle. In short, he wasn't responsible for administration "policy."
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I'm more fascinated, though, with the collateral damage of his claim: Even in a country like the United States, even with a country that is so seemingly transparent, Tenet is saying that there is great ambiguity associated with what the "state" is, who speaks for it, what the agenda is, what the truth is, even from the highest government officials, who may or may not be speaking from a position of truth or facts or based upon access to, or knowledge of, the ultimate decision-maker.
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Without a shred of irony, George Tenet would have us believe that the "they" are someone else, that the decision was -- and is -- the doing of secret, informal, unauthorized, incompetent officials and infiltrators. Not some otherwise innocent entity called the government."

america's DeepState

* arkin:

"Former CIA Director George Tenet spends much of his new book removing his fingerprints from the buildup to the war in Iraq and making a case for why the core al-Qaeda terrorist threat continues to be of paramount importance.

Former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Richard Myers questions how the United States is fighting the war against terrorism, expressing only the most tepid support in a recent talk for the war in Iraq.

Two of the highest ranking government officials of the Bush administration, both at the center of national security decision-making after 9/11, would have us believe that they bear little responsibility for where we are today.

In the Tenet/Myers world, no actual government or military official can ever really be held accountable while participating in good faith: Even to these men at the top, all of the responsibility ultimately resides even higher.

This is the post-9/11 sickness where no one takes any real responsibility for government failure. As for these two, they had their views, their beliefs, even their input; but evidently they did not have enough integrity to really stand for what they believed, nor enough honor to stand up on behalf of American security when as insiders they saw the wrong course being pursued.

First a little news item many might have missed last week: In a talk at the University of Kansas, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff retired Gen. Richard B. Myers disavowed the entire premise of the war against terrorism, likening U.S. strategy to a game of "whack-a-mole."
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Myers says that the United States needed to evolve from the current strategy of whacking terrorists one at a time to a long-term focus on the non-military aspects of changing the ideology of the men and women driven to join Al Qaeda through bolstering diplomacy, economic development, education and information.

Now he tells us."

* Spencer:

"(Tent's) inoculation of Bush from blame is all the more troubling because Tenet is absolutely right about a central claim in the book: The intelligence wasn't determinative of the war. The Bush administration opted to invade Iraq because of a mélange of strategic reasons, for which the public case about weapons of mass destruction was merely, in Paul Wolfowitz's words, "the one issue that everyone could agree on." The proper word for this is "deceit." It's true enough that Tenet had little hope of salvaging his reputation through his memoir, given the overwhelming disrepute in which nearly everyone, left and right, holds him. But he should have devoted much more introspection -- and apology -- to the way in which his faithful service led him to turn intelligence work into policy advocacy. It wouldn't have been very cheerleader-like. But the college basketball season has long since ended."

* Other Horton has more on that stupid media=terrorists .mil OPSEC slideshow. the military told Aftergood to pull the slide pack. Aftergood told the mil to pull itself.

* larisa:

"So Posada is now free to return to Miami while we fight the so-called "war on terror." Can you stand this much propaganda and crime? If there is a hell, and I believe there is something hellish that awaits the truly evil, Posada and his gang of thugs, assassins, and drug dealers, as well as their direct employers (shall we pretend not to know?) will have a rather large portion devoted to them."