Author Topic: Rewriting History  (Read 1842 times)

Mr. Intenseone

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Rewriting History
« on: May 13, 2007, 10:31:23 AM »
George Tenet has a very mixed legacy. On the one hand, he presided over the two biggest intelligence failures of this era -- Sept. 11 and the WMD debacle in Iraq. On the other hand, his CIA did devise and carry out brilliantly an astonishingly bold plan to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Tenet might have just left it at that, gone home with his Presidential Medal of Freedom and let history judge him.

Instead, he's decided to do some judging of his own. In his just-released book, and while hawking it on television, Tenet presents himself as a pathetic victim and scapegoat of an administration that was hellbent on going to war, slam dunk or not.

 

George Tenet (Bebeto Matthews - AP)



George F. Will:
A Bustling Hate-Crime Industry

Emily Yoffe:
Wrapping My Arms Around Memories

David S. Broder:
A Paper Trail Toward Chaos?

David Ignatius:
Ethiopia's Iraq

Jim Hoagland:
Two Leaders, Two Uses of Power


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Tenet writes as if he assumes no one remembers anything. For example: "There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat."

Does he think no one remembers President Bush explicitly rejecting the imminence argument in his 2003 State of the Union address in front of just about the largest possible world audience? Said the president, " Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent" -- and he was not one of them. That in a post-Sept. 11 world, we cannot wait for tyrants and terrorists to gentlemanly declare their intentions. Indeed, elsewhere in the book Tenet concedes that very point: "It was never a question of a known, imminent threat; it was about an unwillingness to risk surprise."

Tenet also makes what he thinks is the damning and sensational charge that the administration, led by Vice President Cheney, had been focusing on Iraq even before Sept. 11. In fact, he reports, Cheney asked for a CIA briefing on Iraq for the president even before they had been sworn in.

This is odd? This is news? For the entire decade following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was the single greatest threat in the region and therefore the most important focus of U.S. policy. U.N. resolutions, congressional debates and foreign policy arguments were seized with the Iraq question and its many post-Gulf War complications -- the weapons of mass destruction, the inspection regimes, the cease-fire violations, the no-fly zones, the progressive weakening of sanctions.

Iraq was such an obsession of the Clinton administration that Bill Clinton ultimately ordered an air and missile attack on its WMD installations that lasted four days. This was less than two years before Bush won the presidency. Is it odd that the administration following Clinton's should share its extreme concern about Iraq and its weapons?

Tenet is not the only one to assume a generalized amnesia about the recent past. One of the major myths (or, more accurately, conspiracy theories) about the Iraq war -- that it was foisted upon an unsuspecting country by a small band of neoconservatives -- also lives blissfully detached from history.

The decision to go to war was made by a war cabinet consisting of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld. No one in that room could even remotely be considered a neoconservative. Nor could the most important non-American supporter of the war to this day -- Tony Blair, father of new Labor.

The most powerful case for the war was made at the 2004 Republican convention by John McCain in a speech that was resolutely "realist." On the Democratic side, every presidential candidate running today who was in the Senate when the motion to authorize the use of force came up -- Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd-- voted yes.

Outside of government, the case for war was made not just by the neoconservative Weekly Standard but -- to select almost randomly -- the traditionally conservative National Review, the liberal New Republic and the center-right Economist. Of course, most neoconservatives supported the war, the case for which was also being made by journalists and scholars from every point on the political spectrum -- from the leftist Christopher Hitchens to the liberal Tom Friedman to the centrist Fareed Zakaria to the center-right Michael Kelly to the Tory Andrew Sullivan. And the most influential tome on behalf of war was written not by any conservative, let alone neoconservative, but by Kenneth Pollack, Clinton's top Near East official on the National Security Council. The title: "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq."

Everyone has the right to renounce past views. But not to make up that past. It is beyond brazen to think that one can get away with inventing not ancient history but what everyone saw and read with their own eyes just a few years ago. And yet sometimes brazenness works.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050301551.html

Mr. Intenseone

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2007, 09:23:33 PM »
Really amazes me that none of the Bush haters responded to this artical, was it because the artical contains exerpts in Tenants own words?

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2007, 04:18:29 AM »
Really amazes me that none of the Bush haters responded to this artical, was it because the artical contains exerpts in Tenants own words?

Tenet. Not Tenant.

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2007, 06:12:52 AM »
George Tenet has a very mixed legacy. On the one hand, he presided over the two biggest intelligence failures of this era -- Sept. 11 and the WMD debacle in Iraq. On the other hand, his CIA did devise and carry out brilliantly an astonishingly bold plan to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Tenet might have just left it at that, gone home with his Presidential Medal of Freedom and let history judge him.

Instead, he's decided to do some judging of his own. In his just-released book, and while hawking it on television, Tenet presents himself as a pathetic victim and scapegoat of an administration that was hellbent on going to war, slam dunk or not.

 

George Tenet (Bebeto Matthews - AP)



George F. Will:
A Bustling Hate-Crime Industry

Emily Yoffe:
Wrapping My Arms Around Memories

David S. Broder:
A Paper Trail Toward Chaos?

David Ignatius:
Ethiopia's Iraq

Jim Hoagland:
Two Leaders, Two Uses of Power


Today's Editorials



Think Tank Town | On Faith | PostGlobal

Who's Blogging?
Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
Rational International
E Pluribus Unum
GregNews


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Tenet writes as if he assumes no one remembers anything. For example: "There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat."

Does he think no one remembers President Bush explicitly rejecting the imminence argument in his 2003 State of the Union address in front of just about the largest possible world audience? Said the president, " Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent" -- and he was not one of them. That in a post-Sept. 11 world, we cannot wait for tyrants and terrorists to gentlemanly declare their intentions. Indeed, elsewhere in the book Tenet concedes that very point: "It was never a question of a known, imminent threat; it was about an unwillingness to risk surprise."

Tenet also makes what he thinks is the damning and sensational charge that the administration, led by Vice President Cheney, had been focusing on Iraq even before Sept. 11. In fact, he reports, Cheney asked for a CIA briefing on Iraq for the president even before they had been sworn in.

This is odd? This is news? For the entire decade following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was the single greatest threat in the region and therefore the most important focus of U.S. policy. U.N. resolutions, congressional debates and foreign policy arguments were seized with the Iraq question and its many post-Gulf War complications -- the weapons of mass destruction, the inspection regimes, the cease-fire violations, the no-fly zones, the progressive weakening of sanctions.

Iraq was such an obsession of the Clinton administration that Bill Clinton ultimately ordered an air and missile attack on its WMD installations that lasted four days. This was less than two years before Bush won the presidency. Is it odd that the administration following Clinton's should share its extreme concern about Iraq and its weapons?

Tenet is not the only one to assume a generalized amnesia about the recent past. One of the major myths (or, more accurately, conspiracy theories) about the Iraq war -- that it was foisted upon an unsuspecting country by a small band of neoconservatives -- also lives blissfully detached from history.

The decision to go to war was made by a war cabinet consisting of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld. No one in that room could even remotely be considered a neoconservative. Nor could the most important non-American supporter of the war to this day -- Tony Blair, father of new Labor.

The most powerful case for the war was made at the 2004 Republican convention by John McCain in a speech that was resolutely "realist." On the Democratic side, every presidential candidate running today who was in the Senate when the motion to authorize the use of force came up -- Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd-- voted yes.

Outside of government, the case for war was made not just by the neoconservative Weekly Standard but -- to select almost randomly -- the traditionally conservative National Review, the liberal New Republic and the center-right Economist. Of course, most neoconservatives supported the war, the case for which was also being made by journalists and scholars from every point on the political spectrum -- from the leftist Christopher Hitchens to the liberal Tom Friedman to the centrist Fareed Zakaria to the center-right Michael Kelly to the Tory Andrew Sullivan. And the most influential tome on behalf of war was written not by any conservative, let alone neoconservative, but by Kenneth Pollack, Clinton's top Near East official on the National Security Council. The title: "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq."

Everyone has the right to renounce past views. But not to make up that past. It is beyond brazen to think that one can get away with inventing not ancient history but what everyone saw and read with their own eyes just a few years ago. And yet sometimes brazenness works.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050301551.html

Are "Scratch and Sniffs" all you have Mr Lib?

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2007, 06:23:16 AM »
More worthless 'proof' of nothing.

This kind of drivel may impress those starry-eyed dreamers that wish to believe with all their hearts that invading Iraq was necessary to save our lives here in America, but it is more junk.

All the rightwing saws are trotted out for one more pathetic show:  Clinton, Democrats believed..., Republicans believed...,  the liberal media believed..., Dick Cheney was not a neocon even though he was a signatory to this: http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf --the blueprint for using force in the middle east...and on and on.

Mr. Intenseone

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2007, 06:56:10 AM »
More worthless 'proof' of nothing.

This kind of drivel may impress those starry-eyed dreamers that wish to believe with all their hearts that invading Iraq was necessary to save our lives here in America, but it is more junk.

All the rightwing saws are trotted out for one more pathetic show:  Clinton, Democrats believed..., Republicans believed...,  the liberal media believed..., Dick Cheney was not a neocon even though he was a signatory to this: http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf --the blueprint for using force in the middle east...and on and on.

Even from the guys own book in his own words you still don't get it!!

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2007, 06:58:13 AM »
Even from the guys own book in his own words you still don't get it!!

Mr Lib.....what was it like to vote for a BIG TIME Liberal like Clinton?


Mr. Intenseone

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2007, 07:01:29 AM »
Mr Lib.....what was it like to vote for a BIG TIME Liberal like Clinton?



BTW, I wasn't 40 when I voted for him, I was much younger. If you really are a DR.( ::)) act like it, you act like a child

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2007, 07:03:42 AM »
BTW, I wasn't 40 when I voted for him, I was much younger.



I'm sorry the truth hurts Mr Lib.

Mr. Intenseone

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #9 on: May 14, 2007, 07:06:57 AM »
Lib?.....whatever dude!

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #10 on: May 14, 2007, 07:14:09 AM »
Even from the guys own book in his own words you still don't get it!!
What is there to get?

What are you trying to prove?

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #11 on: May 14, 2007, 07:43:24 AM »
Lib?.....whatever dude!


Mr Lib, did you or did you not vote for Clinton?

I understand your pain.  :o

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #12 on: May 14, 2007, 07:46:37 AM »
Lib?.....whatever dude!


Mr Lib, if you voted for Clinton (which you admitted) that would make YOU a LIBERAL.

True Republicans like myself would NEVER vote for a Lib.......unlike yourself.

Deal with it "dude".

Mr. Intenseone

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #13 on: May 14, 2007, 09:12:56 AM »
Mr Lib, if you voted for Clinton (which you admitted) that would make YOU a LIBERAL.

True Republicans like myself would NEVER vote for a Lib.......unlike yourself.

Deal with it "dude".

Sorry dude, you're far from a Republican.

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #14 on: May 14, 2007, 09:32:49 AM »
Sorry dude, you're far from a Republican.

Lets analyse that statement......Mr Lib voted for the LIBERAL Bill Clinton. I, on the otherhand, have NEVER voted Democrat in my life.

So, in Mr Libs Koolaid drenched mind, that makes me the Lib?  ::) ::)

Mr Lib, just wondering.....did pulling the voting lever for Liberal Clinton, feel like Monica's pull on Clinton's "lever"?  :-*


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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #15 on: May 14, 2007, 09:37:20 AM »
Typically, for your garden variety drones, any person who speaks out against a conservative aligned administration is a LIB.  period.

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #16 on: May 14, 2007, 09:44:06 AM »
Typically, for your garden variety drones, any person who speaks out against a conservative aligned administration is a LIB.  period.

Excellent point although Mr. Hate is fueled by anger and hatred. He's not a garden variety drone, he's too dangerous to be garden variety. Anyone that advocates the killing of someone with different political views or tries to discredit someone with different political views with such taboos as kiddie porn is not garden variety.

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #17 on: May 14, 2007, 09:50:13 AM »
Typically, for your garden variety drones, any person who speaks out against a conservative aligned administration is a LIB.  period.

Wrong again.......I just happen to be a Republican who both refuses the administrations Koolaid, and can see a TRAIN WRECK when it's occurring.

OzmO

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #18 on: May 14, 2007, 09:59:34 AM »
Wrong again.......I just happen to be a Republican who both refuses the administrations Koolaid, and can see a TRAIN WRECK when it's occurring.

I was making the point that Mr. Intenseone's definition of a Lib, or what makes a lib is that.  I wasn't saying that you weren't conservative. 

I haven't really seen anything you've posted that would directly indicate a liberal leanings on your part.

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #19 on: May 14, 2007, 11:32:20 AM »
From what I see...

Mr I was a democrat.  He switched parties for the 2000 elections.  He now supports the neoconservative agenda and believes it's not about oil, even when Bush stands in the Rose Garden in December and tells us, it's about oil.

Enigma is a lifetime republican who is disgusted with the neoconservative element which has had leadership of the party in the last 6 years.  He misses the 20 years before that - the Reagans.

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Re: Rewriting History
« Reply #20 on: May 14, 2007, 02:21:11 PM »
From what I see...

Enigma is a lifetime republican who is disgusted with the neoconservative element which has had leadership of the party in the last 6 years.  He misses the 20 years before that - the Reagans.

Your 100% correct 240.