''George Tenet takes one for the team''
Printed on Tuesday, July 15, 2003 {at} 00:06:25 CDT 

By Paul Harris

YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada) 

(YellowTimes.org) - CIA Director George Tenet is an amazing guy, a 
real man's man. Here he is, the head of what is putatively the most 
powerful and clever spy agency on the planet, and he has come forward 
to tell the world he's a damn liar. That takes guts. It also takes an 
incredible amount of hubris to think that anyone more evolved than, say, 
a New England scrod, is going to believe him.  

Now, it isn't just that he told a lie; after all, he's a government 
official and most of us are more surprised to find out they aren't lying. 
But this isn't a lie told knowing he would be convincing his nation, and
perhaps several others, to go and beat the tar out of a backward nation 
that had already been on its knees for eleven years. Oh, he could justify 
that by saying the leader of that country was not a nice man; but, for 
varying reasons, you could say that the leaders of many nations, including 
Mr. Tenet's, are not nice people. It isn't even a lie told to his 
commander-in-chief or anyone else during the lead-up to war in Iraq that 
is the problem.  

It's the big one he's telling now, the one where he is gallantly taking 
the fall for his president.  

George Tenet said, in a statement released July 11, that he bears 
responsibility for President Bush telling the world about a clear 
and present danger from Iraq. Bush had said in his State of the Union 
speech on January 28, 2003: "The British government has learned that 
Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from 
Africa." Tenet's statement does not indicate if he personally cleared 
the speech but does acknowledge his agency has responsibility for it. 
"The president had every reason to believe that the text presented to 
him was sound. Those 16 words should never have been included in the 
text written for the president."  

It is always hard to separate the wheat from the chaff when political 
people speak, but the facts seem to be these: A story surfaced that 
suggested Iraq tried to purchase 550 tons of uranium from Niger, and 
may have succeeded. The story eventually turned out to be false and, 
early in the game, the CIA, including George Tenet, made sure to alert 
the White House that these stories were at least suspect, if not 
altogether untrue. The White House ignored these warnings and plunged 
ahead with their accusations against Iraq, using the image of large 
mushroom clouds as a negotiating point to convince the rest of the 
world to support their war against Saddam Hussein.  

Therefore, what did George Tenet do when he realized that the president 
had relied on this likely inaccurate information? Why, he did what any 
loyal subject would do: he kept his mouth shut.  

It's an amazing story he's telling these days. It seems he was perfectly 
content to let his president, his congress, the president's cabinet, the 
secret services of Australia and Great Britain and anyone else who 
would listen believe that Iraq had big loads of weapons of mass 
destruction when, in fact, it looks as if they didn't have any at all.  

Now we are being asked to accept that information received at the 
White House via the CIA, even when the latter makes clear the 
information is highly suspect, is simply accepted without so much as 
a question being asked. And on the strength of that information, again 
without any further questioning, the most powerful nation on earth is 
prepared to launch into a potentially disastrous war. It suggests that 
any American citizen ought to be able to float any idea at the White 
House and get it acted upon because no one who lives there has the wit 
to ask any questions.  

Actually, the fact George Tenet tells lies should be obvious. What 
should be equally obvious is that he is lying now; George Tenet did 
not mislead George Bush. Bush knew exactly what weaponry Iraq 
possessed (so did Britain's Tony Blair, although a friend of mine in 
Australia assures me that Prime Minister John Howard probably didn't 
because he is truly stupid). Tenet's lie is the one he is telling now 
in the time honored tradition of soldiers falling on their swords for 
their commander-in-chief and taking one for the team, so to speak. Only 
the truly bewildered and foolish will fail to see through this attempt 
by the Bush team to deflect the blame for this fiasco from their man.  

If the White House thought the president had truly been misled about 
this issue, even inadvertently, they would have retracted the remarks 
made in the State of the Union address. It is very significant that 
when speaking to the United Nations a week later, Secretary of State 
Colin Powell did not present those same remarks about the African 
uranium because, according to him, the story was not reliable. The 
fact is that if Powell knew the information was unreliable, so did 
Bush. That Bush chose to let his speech stand, if indeed he made 
the speech unwittingly, makes clear that he was willing to allow 
the world to rely on evidence that he knew to be unsubstantiated 
-- so who is truly the liar here?  

It is a scary situation that the people at the top in most nations 
breathe such rarified air that their brains are oxygen deprived. That 
is the only explanation for their constant assumption that the people 
will believe any line of nonsense that is fed to them. What is even 
more frightening, and thoroughly depressing, is just how often they 
are right about that.  

But George Tenet's current fairy tale is too fabulous even for the 
group that P.T. Barnum thought was born at a rate of one per minute.  

[Paul Harris is self-employed as a consultant providing Canadian 
businesses with the tools and expertise to successfully reintegrate 
their sick or injured employees into the workplace. He has traveled 
extensively in what we arrogant North Americans refer to as "the Third 
World," and he believes that life is very much like a sewer: what you 
get out of it depends on what you put into it. Paul lives in Canada.]  

Paul Harris encourages your comments: pharris{at}YellowTimes.org  

YellowTimes.org is an international news and opinion publication. 

YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced, reprinted, 
or broadcast provided that any such reproduction identifies the original 
source, http://www.YellowTimes.org. Internet web links to
http://www.YellowTimes.org are appreciated. 

                             -==-

Source: YellowTimes ...
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1474&mode=thread&order=0

Cheers, Steve..

---