Bush and Tenet and Dean triangulation

(this is from billmon's excellent weblog Whiskey Bar -- http://billmon.org/ )

I don't know if this was a calculated move on Howard Dean's part, or just a random shot. But it has interesting possibilities either way...

Dean said whoever was responsible for misleading Bush over claims of Iraq's nuclear weapons program should quit:

"Whoever it was who withheld that information needs to resign," he said in an interview with ABC's 'Good Morning America' show."

I say interesting, because the White House is obviously angling for George Tenet's resignation -- something that the neocon firebrands have been demanding since Bush took office.

But now, if Tenet resigns, it will look like Dean has drawn blood -- and an implicit confession that there is something very serious and very wrong going on inside the Bush administration. This has connotations of a different Dean's warning to a different Republican president:

John Dean: We have a cancer within, close to the Presidency, that is growing.

On the other hand, if the White House backs down and keeps Tenet, Bush will look like he's either:

a.) Conceding his responsiblity for the Niger uranium fiasco.

or:

b.) Allowing a lying, incompetent CIA director (and even worse: a lying, incompetent Clinton-appointed CIA director) to remain in office because he doesn't want to take the political heat for firing him.

And of course, those of a more conspiratorial nature could (and no doubt would) whisper dark rumors to the effect that Shrub can't fire Tenet because he knows too much.

Nice.

If random, it was a hell of a lucky shot. If intentional, it was a very clever piece of political theatre.

Which means Karl Rove might just want to rethink his desire to run against Dean. Because this guy really is starting to sound like a different kind of Democrat -- one who knows how to use a stiletto.

thanks for posting it. I agree with Billmon, unlikely that this is just a lucky shot. Dean's been consistently on target with his remarks on Iraq. He clearly saw the pitfalls. This hardly marks him as prescient, I saw them too, but he does get high grades for articulating something that's awfully close to the truth. The meme that he doesn't know anything about foreign policy looks feebler with each passing day. I hope he keeps it up.

good post! I hadn't considered all those angles. Thanx!

PITT: On September 26 2001, George Bush II went down to the CIA, put an arm around Tenet, and said that he had a “report” for the American people, that we have the best possible intelligence thanks to the good people at the CIA. We’ve come a fair piece down the road since then, and if you read through the news these days, you get the definite sense that the Bush administration is attempting to lay blame for the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, to lay blame for that at the feet of the CIA. Furthermore, by all appearances, the months of reports the administration put out about Iraq’s weapons capabilities are not turning out to be accurate. To no small extent, it appears that there is a scapegoating process taking place here. What is your take on this?

McG: It is interesting that you would go back to September 26, because that was a very key performance on the part of our President. Here was an agency that was created expressly to prevent another Pearl Harbor. That was why the CIA was created originally in 1947. Harry Truman was hell-bent on making sure that, if there were little pieces of information spread around the government, that they all came to one central intelligence agency, one place where they could be collated and analyzed, and the analysis be given to policy people.

So here is September 11, the first time since Pearl Harbor that this system failed. It was worse than Pearl Harbor. More people were killed on September 11 than were killed at Pearl Harbor, and where were the pieces? They were scattered all around the government, just like they were before Pearl Harbor. For George Bush to go out to CIA headquarters and put his arm around George Tenet and tell the world that we have the best intelligence services in the world, this really called for some analysis, if you will.

My analysis is that George Bush had no option but to keep George Tenet on as Director, because George Tenet had warned Bush repeatedly, for months and months before September 11, that something very bad was about to happen.

PITT: There was the August 6 2001 briefing…

McG: On August 6, the title of the briefing was, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US,” and that briefing had the word “Hijacking” in it. That’s all I know about it, but that’s quite enough. In September, Bush had to make a decision. Is it feasible to let go of Tenet, whose agency flubbed the dub on this one? And the answer was no, because Tenet knows too much about what Bush knew, and Bush didn’t know what to do about it. That’s the bottom line for me.

Bush was well-briefed. Before he went off to Texas to chop wood for a month like Reagan did in California, he was told all these things. He didn’t even have the presence of mind to convene his National Security Council, and say, “OK guys, we have all these reports, what are we going to do about it?” He just went off to chop wood.

http://truthout.org/docs_03/062603B.shtml

for them to fuck with CIA, too, Dr Pitt...

on the other hand, "stupid and dangerous" would be in keeping with all administration trends...

Your screen name is what a bunch of my students used to call me! That's awesome! :)

remember?

I earned this moniker from some of my staff years ago, and as a middle-aged white man I wear it with honor.

...but enough about me and you. Back to Howie:

Don't you think he's nailing this, no matter how it plays out?

15 more political IQ points to compete with the Dean camp.

Dean '04