The US House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has invited George Tenet, the former Director of the CIA, to testify on May 10, 2007.  The committee is directed by Henry Waxman, a representative from Beverly Hills, California.  Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, Waxman has tried to unravel the tangled mass of misunderstandings, errors and lies surrounding the activities of George W. Bush and his coterie in the White House.  So far Waxman has not achieved a great deal, and it would be hard to say with certainty whether he is being stonewalled or is just treading gingerly.  Recently, the committee issued a subpoena to Condoleezza Rice, seeking to compel her also to testify, but she has indicated that she will defy the subpoena.  The committee may seek a rule for contempt, but Rice is using a separation-of-powers subterfuge to dodge the committee.  Tenet may be a much more willing witness.

In his new book, At the Center of the Storm,  according to several articles I have read about it, Tenet offers a number of explanations, rationalizations and accusations, the merit of some of which can hardly be doubted.  Tenet maintains that Richard Cheney and others intended from the outset to attack Iraq.  He claims that Richard Perle had a mind to pin the blame for 9/11 on Saddam Hussein.  Pretending that the CIA believed all along that Iraq possessed WMD, Tenet does, however, insist that the CIA never held that there was an operational link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.  Tenet also explains that his famous “slam dunk” statement was misconstrued, that he did not mean that it was slam-dunk that Iraq had WMD, but that it was slam-dunk that the CIA could produce a more convincing report to sell the war to the general public.

With regard to Tenet’s comments on Richard Perle, Perle, in his own defense, adduces a discrepancy of 3 days in the time of the supposed meeting wherein Perle is alleged to have advocated blaming Iraq for 9/11, but, knowing how Perle was talking at the time and how he comported himself throughout the early days of the war, I have no problem accepting Tenet’s version of the story.  Perle, a big Israel-firster, co-authored a paper for Israel in 1996 called A Clean Break, in which he championed regime change in Iraq.

And I certainly have no doubt about what Tenet has to say of Richard Cheney, with Cheney still clutching till this day at the straw of a Hussein-bin Ladin operational link, though it is accepted almost universally that no such operational link existed.

I believe, as I believed during the summer of 2003, that Tenet was a scapegoat that Bush used to exonerate himself of responsibility for the misbegotten invasion.  Again and again, Bush has tried to blame his subordinates for his own errors of judgment and deceptions.  It was plain that Tenet was pressured to resign in order to signal that he was accepting the  blame.  The gold medal that was awarded to him subsequently by Bush had no more meaning than a picture of Superman on a $2 tee shirt.

There is probably much more food for thought in the book, which I would probably not be able to buy in Chile, even if I wanted to.

My biggest problem with the book is that I was very annoyed back in the summer of 2003, when Tenet resigned, that he didn’t come clean immediately.  It would have been much more salutary if he had laid bare the whole sordid mess in good time.

Hopefully, Waxman will be able to piece more of his puzzle together.

	Web useless-knowledge.com