Tenet Details Efforts to Justify Invading Iraq

[G_j]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042700550.html

Tenet Details Efforts to Justify Invading Iraq
Former CIA Director Says White House Focused on the Idea Long Before 9/11

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 28, 2007; Page A01

White House and Pentagon officials, and particularly Vice President Cheney, were determined to attack Iraq from the first days of the Bush administration, long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and repeatedly stretched available intelligence to build support for the war, according to a new book by former CIA director George J. Tenet.

Although Tenet does not question the threat Saddam Hussein posed or the sincerity of administration beliefs, he recounts numerous efforts by aides to Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to insert "crap" into public justifications for the war. Tenet also describes an ongoing fear within the intelligence community of the administration's willingness to "mischaracterize complex intelligence information."

"There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraq threat," Tenet writes in "At the Center of the Storm," to be released Monday by HarperCollins. The debate "was not about imminence but about acting before Saddam did."

White House counselor Dan Bartlett yesterday called Tenet a "true patriot" but disputed his conclusions, saying "the president did wrestle with those very serious questions." Responding to reports from the book in yesterday's New York Times, Bartlett suggested that the former CIA director might have been unaware of all the discussions. President Bush, Bartlett said on NBC's "Today Show," "weighed all the various consequences before he did make a decision."

..more..

[Hepburn]

1. Oh, what bullshit from Bartlett!

Bush supposedly legitimately weighed all of these issues and the then head of the CIA was not in the loop on the discussion any of these intell matters? GMAFB....who does he think he is kidding??

[Toots]

2. Right, why would they keep the CIA out of the discussions?

Bartlett may have just admitted in an off handed way that they did their talking only within their very inner circles and had no use for the official Intelligence Agency of the USA. They knew it all.....