… I know everyone in the world has commented on his “60 Minutes ” appearance by now. But I just can’t help it.
Can this incompetent clueless braggart who admits to endorsing torture (“waterboarding”) and claims results from it that have no corroboration, but won’t call it torture, this idiot who is repsonsible for the greatest intelligence failures in the history of our nation, actually be serious in his attempt to parse his infamous “slam dunk” comment? As if his personal image were the most important issue in this tragedy.
Here’s what he said in his interview with Scott Pelley:
What did you mean by slam dunk?” Pelley asks.
“I guess I meant that we could do better,” Tenet says.
“Do better?” Pelley asks.
“We can put a better case together for a public case, that’s what I meant. That’s what this was about,” Tenet explains.
Tenet says the president wasn’t happy with the presentation. So he was telling Mr. Bush that improving the presentation would be a slam dunk. But Tenet says the leak to Woodward made the remark look like the decisive moment in the decision to go to war.
“I’ll never believe that what happened that day informed the president’s view or belief in the legitimacy of this war. Never,” Tenet insists.
And this is the guy who got the Presidential Medal for freedom for his achievements in “intelligence;” who got a four million dollar book contract to promote this self serving transparent idiocy.
Saying that making a “presentation” for the war would be a slam dunk, is SO totally different from saying that the case for war is a “slam dunk”, right? It couldn’t possibly have had an influence on the subsequent policy decision, this statement from the head of the CIA. What if he’d said what he says he said this way: the case for WMD’s is shaky but I can make a “slam dunk” presentation that will fool the American people into believing it boss? THAT would be okay? That would be honorable? The “context” he gives his betrayal of his trust is worse than the original “misinterpretation” of the quote he’s so upset about. (It’s all about him, not thoe who died because ofhis incompetence). The original interpretaion of “slam dunk” merely makes himlook like an incompetent fool, the former, his new spin makes it sound like he wants us to believe he was willing to be a venal liar to suck up to his boss.
What if he had told the truth or what he now maintains he believes was the truth–that the WMD aspect of the case for the war was not strong on the basis of the intelligence he was aware of? Therefore any slam dunk “presentation” would be a fraud. And yet he considers it a great betrayal that he’s tagged with that damning “slam dunk” idiocy.
How stupid does he think we are? Don’t answer that. The big question is: how stupid or devious can a human being be? I think George Tenet has given us an answer.
Give the medal back George. Give the money back too. There’s no way you’re going to get your honor back with your sniveling weasel words.
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