Spring & Summer Reading

I've just finished reading George Tenent's book, "At the Center of the Storm." The gist of it is that Tenent probably deserved the "Medal of Freedom," for putting up with the Administration's neo-cons, if for nothing else. Paranoia and arrogance is a bad mix, but DoD under Rumsfeld and the White House under Cheney seem to have had an abundance of both.

Perhaps history will judge them more kindly, but it seems apparent that in their terror over terror and fear of being blamed for incompetence leading up to 9/11, a small group of ideologues, who were driving our post 9/11 responses, basically completely lost faith in our established institutions - i.e. the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, et al and established their own networks to circumvent these institutions. That's the charitible case. Worse would be that this same small group of ideologues successfully seized, through lies and deceit, control of American foreign policy and, by Cheney proxy, the Presidency.

According to Tenent, he wrote the book because he came to believe that certain elements within the White House (he never blames the President directly) took his "Slam Dunk" remark out of context, fed it to Bob Woodward, in an attempt to shift all of the pre-Iraq invasion intelligence errors onto him and the CIA. Fair enough and in that he makes a case that perhaps did not need making. If one simply followed the day-to-day news during the lead-up to war, it was clear long before the "Slam Dunk" remark that this was an Administration that wanted War. [Note: it is often conveniently forgotten today in the Administration's claim that "we all had the same intelligence," that almost one-third of Congress voted against the resolution granting the President the authority for the Iraqi invasion and that this group was composed of some very knowledgeable and sober people - i.e. former senator Bob Graham of Florida, who served on the Senate Intelligence Committee].

More importantly, Tenent's book is an interesting account of the paranoia within the Administration. Tenent would have been wiser had he taken the advice of his former mentor and resigned after the first six months of the Bush Presidency. On the other hand, the country itself may have been worse off. Were it not for people like Tenent and Powell, we might be facing worse today.

Tenent was clearly an "outsider" within the Administration. Orginially appointed by Clinton, he was held over based on the recommendation, apparently, of Bush Senior. As far as I can remember, he was the sole senior appointee to have transitioned between the two Administrations. And, his "access" to policy making was downgraded, when Bush Junior decided that the Director of the CIA would no longer be given "cabinet status."

Tenent critics (in and outside of the CIA) have accussed him of being "too political." Clearly from his book, he is a "people person"; he ran the CIA as such and a major personal goal was to revive the human intelligence side of the agency. Further, unlike Powell, he had little if any independent support base outside of government. Anyone in a position of authority in any organization must be wary of "speaking truth to power." There is a fine line between going against the boss and being a team player. So, I don't really hold that particular criticism against him. Due to the nature of his job, had he resigned "on principle," very little of detail could have been discussed in the open press. Further, the Administration would have simply spun his departure as the completion of a changing of the guard and replaced him with a neo-con. [Powell was in a similar situation, but not to the same degree; Powell had more of an independant support base outside of the Administration. I am an admirer of Powell and believe that he has served his country well, but he still owes the American people a book similar to Tenent's, as well as post-Administration books from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.]

There are interesting tidbits in the book. One is that following our arrival in Baghdad, the military found countless documents scattered about the various Hussein ministries confirming the linkage of Hussein to Al Qaeda and 9/11. Not too surprisingly, all of these documents turned out to be forgeries. Forgeries seem to play an important role in events surrounding the Bush Administration: yellow-cake uranium in Niger, Dan Rather's demise, etc. There has been some circumstantial evidence that traces the yellow-cake forgeries to an American neo-con (Michael Ledeen), but more on that in a future post.

So...research into Iraq continues. I am now reading three books on the subject: Paul Bremer's ""My Year In Iraq," Frances Fukuyama's "America At the Crossroads," and Micahel Oren's "Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present." [And, as a note to birthday/father's day givers, have completed all of Buchanan's books, all of Woodward's books, "Cobra II," "Fiasco," "Hubris," and numerous others...so certificates might be more appropriate.]

To date, Iraq seems to have been "the Perfect Storm." I've written that the only strategic interests the United States has in the region are Oil and Israel. Both begged for regime change in Iraq. Hussein was neither a friend of the Israelis or the Saudis and a threat to both. Cheney understood the Saudis and oil aspect as many, if not all, of the neo-cons understood the Israeli aspect. 9/11 presented the opportunity.

I am not a conspiracy buff. Well, at least not big, all comprehensive conspiracies. Rather, I suspect much of human behavior consists of thousands upon thousands of little conspiracies, with sort of ad hoc motivations. They form and they go, based on specific purposes. Today's conspirators may be tomorrow's enemies. In the case of Iraq, I suspect, there was simply a confluence of interests. Various people, in positions of influence, for different reasons, were pursuing the same goal. I do not believe "cherry-picking" intelligence to be an impeachable offense. It may be a sign of incompetence and reason enough not to vote for Dick Cheney or George Bush ever again, and may damn them in the eyes of history, but it is not sufficient an offense to call for impeachment. If, however, intelligence was not only cherry picked, but fabricated to be cherry picked and this was known by the policy makers that IS, in my opinion, impeachable and tantamount to treason within a democratic state.

To my knowledge there is, at present, no hard evidence linking the cherry picking of intelligence to fabrication of this same intelligence, although there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to warrant further investigation. And, needless to say, that in itself will not resolve the present Iraqi situation.

More within the next few days.