Dimitry,
I have pondered your question for some time now. Perhaps, the following link on Asia Times provides a clue:http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE10Ak03.html.
The "terror war" was launched by a mass murder at the Trade Towers which we are told was accomplished by nineteen Arabs. This was clearly a controlled demolition and cared out by a team with vast resources and military precision. Who would want such a war and why? Could the agenda be to destroy the military, financial, and moral power of the US? So it seems. Why? Perhaps the conspiracy theorists are right, there exists a shadow government in the US and beyond who wish to destroy American sovereignty as it is an obstacle to their delusions of a one world empire. An oligarchy spanning the globe with secret and ruthless masters bent on enslaving mankind? Could it be?

Tenet's explanation...why we should be sympathetic to the decisions of President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding Iraq.

Mr. Arkin,

Assuming that the President's decision to attack Iraq had been soley based on what you have conjectured here today, then your point is valid. However, we know that this was not the case at all and therefore your premise is flawed.

Bush had been warned repeatedly by the Germans, British Intelligence,Tony Blair and many others that the information that he referred to publicly, which he was using 'a priori', to justify his reasons for attacking Iraq was flawed, 'Curveball' and all.

#43 was an activist commander-in-Thief with a predilection for going to war against Iraq; he came into office with that objective in mind. His mind was made up long before he received the information that was referred to in Mr. Tenet's book. Does that let Mr. Tenet off of the hook, or excuse what he is saying on CNN and elsewhere?

Former CIA Director Tenet, Secretary O'Neil, General Powell, General Myers and all of the others to whom blame gets shifted (for not being more emboldened to speak out and resign) were not the problems. The real problem was failed and misdirected leadership at the top of the food chain, and their co-conspirators Rumsfool at the Defense Department, as well as the reluctant Republican majority in the House and Senate who failed to do their jobs.

Having lived with a CIA agent at one time and understanding how that culture works (and I know that you likely know a few CIA agents yourself), you more than I would know how and why Mr. Tenet handled the information in the fashion that he did.

Besides, Tenet had some of the fallacious information that #43 eventually used in the State of the Union speech and on other occasions pulled from his speeches on 2 previous occasions. Isn't it ironic that the same information managed to get into the State of the Union speech anyway and #43 kept using it on other occasion, somebody give me a break!

Are you telling me then that the President actually makes speeches to the American public without actually knowing whether the information is true or not? Well, I actually do believe that, and that he uses information that he knows was fallacious.

The buck stops with #43, or should I say #28 (with reference to his approval rating)?

I do not quarrel with you Mr. Arkin on George Tenet's craven attempts to excuse himself from the deliberations that led us into this monumental failure. But, like so many other commentators have done and continue to do with Tenet, you separate him out like so much chaff, obsess over his role in all of this, then end up in a bizarre sort of way deflecting attention away from the central reason this failure in leadership occurred--the broad, respective motivations each of the individual deliberators had in reaching the conclusion that we had to send ground forces into Iraq.

Bush had personal motivations--not the least of which was revenge for Sadaam's attempted assassination of his father. Cheney and Rumsfeld had redemption in mind--for their failure to anticipate that leaving Sadaam in power in 1991 would doom the Kurds to Sadaam's taste for revenge. The neocons had this silly, romantic fantasy about using American military power to send a message to the world and to force democracy at the point of a gun on a recalcitrant Middle East region that would ultimately see a Utopian set of democratic states dominated by Israel. And the right wing noise machine--dominated by macho, red state, white males anxious to reassert white male dominance in all things saw a war as just the ticket to re-energize their old 1950s and 1960s battles against the cultural left.

It might be helpful if we didn't all have this reflexive tendency to find ond single scapegoat to pin all of this on and look at America's failure from the perspective of realism.

Saddam's Iraq had "connections" with Al Qaeda in the same way we had connections with the KGB and GRU during the Cold War: Saddam was one of the secular socialists who were on AQ's enemies list just behind the US and Israel but slightly ahead of the Gulf monarchs and emirs. The Iraqi intelligence service engaged representatives of AQ like any good intelligence services, not to make common cause but to determine intent and means. Now in the "bazaar" world of the Middle East, that can mean a little horse trading around the edges, but Saddam was no more likely to authorize giving WMDs to AQ than he was to commit suicide. First, because there was the probability that any WMDs could be traced back to him, thus inviting mass retaliation, and Second, more importantly, he could never have been sure that the any WMDs he might have provided to AQ would not have been turned back on him. We forget that the Oil for Food program of the UN actually gave him more control of Iraq, without actually hurting his own lifestyle, than anything in his prior history. So he could afford a couple of million a year in bonuses to the families of Palestinian "martyrs" without actually doing anything to promote true international, i.e., anti-US, terrorism that would provoke bringing down destruction on his head. In the end, he agreed to inspections. Bush and Cheney just didn't want to let facts stand in the way of their Romanesque Triumph, now forfeited by their incompetence.

Do you think at this point if we had not invaded Iraq, Iraq would be on there way to matching Irans goal of getting a nuke ?
Alex,

No one is listening to you. If we hadn't invaded Iraq, we would have still had a military to stop a nuclear threat, that's more than we have now. Take your song and dance elsewhere.

Oh, of course the solution was "sanctions"(yep, NK is the prime example of why appeasement and sanctions dont work).
Maybe a nuke confrontation between Iraq and Iran would be better then the mess Bush got us in.

Posted by: Alex

Arkin writes,

"His chapter and verse isn't convincing. More revealing is one of Tenet's central arguments of his book: He wants us to believe he wasn't really a part of the "administration," that even though he was director of Central Intelligence and met with the president six days a week, he didn't really "know" what was going on in the inner circle. In short, he wasn't responsible for administration "policy.""

You have to realize there are two inner circles, the first is an inner inner circle composed of three men Bush, Cheney, and Rove. Tenet is telling the truth here. The food chain starts with Bush, then Cheney and Rove, all others are sacrificial.

"The Bush "people" were intent upon regime change in Iraq, bolstered by the intelligence about WMD and their fears that any Al Qaeda-Iraq (or other state) connection might mean an even more catastrophic attack on America in the future. Dick Cheney and company felt after 9/11 that they just could not afford not to act when the "intelligence" raised so many questions that looked suspicious. Tenet doesn't disagree.

The Iraq war that started as a result of regime change did not go well, and the effects might indeed bring to America the very threats they were hoping to eliminate."

In essence the Bush people have an Oedipus complex. The actions they have taken to prevent terrorism from happening are actually causing it to happen.

The CIA did not know what was going on in Iraq, but with the Bush policy of preemptive strike, an unknown was taken as a known threat. Or more simple said, if we can not prove Iraq not to be a danger, they are a danger, guilty till proven innocent. Bush has proved Iraq innocent, where do we go now?

DC

Do you think at this point if we had not invaded Iraq, Iraq would be on there way to matching Irans goal of getting a nuke ?
Oh, of course the solution was "sanctions"(yep, NK is the prime example of why appeasement and sanctions dont work).
Maybe a nuke confrontation between Iraq and Iran would be better then the mess Bush got us in.

Like Mr. Arkin, I found Mr. Tenet's protestations about CIA involvement or lack of involvement in intelligence reported about Iraq as rather disingenuous. "They" did it? That's the sort of explanation I get from young children. Women like to say that some men, even the leader of one of the most influential and powerful government agencies in the world, never grow up. There does seem to be a palpable fear in Washington of calling any senior administration official to task or even questioning their motives and Mr. Tenet really dances around quite a bit whenever Mr. Cheney's name comes up. In a recent interview, Tenet said the only administration position on Iraq that he challenged was the purported connection between Al Qaeda and Hussein. He said that the intelligence gathered by the CIA did not support that claim. Oh, really? Not a difficult choice - he picked the most obvious lie to challenge. I suppose he saw that no amount of innuendo could spare the CIA from criticism if he allowed that whopper to go unchallenged. There are so many questions brought up by Arkin and the other commentators that Mr. Tenet can't or won't answer. This also shows how crucial a relatively free and independant press is to preserve freedom and protect the American way of life.

Excellent post Mr. Arkin. Congratulations on being one of the first in the media to not ignore that section of the book.

Mike Flagg:

Funny you say you are an independent and then you dump bile, spit and venom on all liberals. Where was the criticism of the conservatives that would qualify you as an independent?

Of course I believe everything you said. Just like I believe that we were greeted as liberators and that oil is paying for the war.

The point is that no one can solve the Iraq problem because this administration has so grossly mismanaged the war that there simply aren't ANY solutions left. It's not that liberals don't want to win. It's like being behind 72-0 in a football game in the 4th quarter with the team exhausted and no substitutes left and then saying, "Okay, you coach us to a win."

A coin toss would have produced better decisions than this administration. Wouldn't we all like to have had 50% of these decisions go the other way:

Waiting for inspections to work.
Using more troops.
Protecting government (non-oil) infrastructure.
Firing the Iraqi army.
Staying the course.

If you look up brainwashed in the dictionary you will see your picture.

I can only recommend that you re-consider concluding that everything you hear on Fox News as being factual. Maybe then you would have a clue...

RL,

Great thoughts. I think we should apply all this qualified language to all topics. So too much carbon in the air MAY do this or that...but we don't know.

So we are supposed to act on one alleged threat and not the other?

Why is one Iraq intelligence held to an absolute level of certainty while other things are not?

Of course the war against Iraq actually began during the Clinton administration with the almost daily bombing attacks. President Clinton says that he began these attacks because of his belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that his National Security administration beieved that a war against Iraq was inevitable. The mistakes about Iraq were not the result of neocon conspiritors, but involved the last three administrations relyiing on faulty intelligence. During two of those administrations George Tenet headed our chieve intelligence operation

Flagg, you mention Saddam gave safe haven to al-Qeada. I'll try to say this a succinctly as possible. You're wrong.

The point made in this posting and from tenet, whatever you think about him (i'm an independent) is that there actually were links and connections between al qaeda and iraq. and yet it is amazing liberals still want to debate this. We were attacked on 9/11 by the terrorists from al qaeda who were given safe haven in Bagdad by saddam hussein. i dont know why liberals don't understand this. our action in iraq was never about wmd, but was about taking out a government that supported those who committed terror against MY country. all of you liberal elites out there who oppose what we're doing in Iraq need to understand we havent been hit since then, so we must be doing something right. I challenge all liberals to figure out a solution to Iraq that doesnt involve surrending to Al qaeda and converting to islam which is what all of you seem to propose. Mike Flagg, OUT.

Arkin mentions 9 "suspicious and potentially frightening" connections between Baghdad and terrorists. I've addressed each of the 9 below:

1. these were only "possible" contacts? So it's also possible they didn't have contact?

2. they only "may" have cooperated? So they also may not have cooperated?

3. so al-Qa'ida "wanted" Iraqi expertise. Did they get it?

4. Zarqawi had safe haven in northern Iraq. Saddam didn't control this area, so this is not a link between al-Qa'ida and Saddam.

5. Zarqawi associates... see #4

6. Nearly 100 Zarqawi operatives... see #4

7. In the spring and summer of 2002, "more than a dozen al-Qa'ida-affiliated extremists converged on Baghdad." And on 9/11, more than a dozen converged on the WTC.

8. At least one "senior" Zarqawi operative "maintained some sort of liaison relationship with the Iraqis." Who, and what type of relationship? Was it Curveball?

9. an Islamic Jihad leader was "willing to strike U.S.". What would Condi say? That is isn't "actionable" intelligence.

I don't know about you, but these don't seem to frightening to me.

U.S. Accuses Six Men of Plotting to Attack Fort Dix

By David Voreacos and Chris Dolmetsch

May 8 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. authorities charged six men, including five identified as ``radical Islamists,'' in a plot to kill American soldiers at the Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey.

U.S. agents who infiltrated the group arrested the men last night and charged five of them with conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers. They face a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted. A sixth was charged with aiding and abetting illegal possession of firearms. He faces 10 years in prison.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a 15-month undercover probe, relying on two informants who secretly taped meetings in which the alleged plot took shape, according to a complaint filed by U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie. An FBI affidavit describes months of planning during which the alleged conspirators scouted military bases, discussed weapons, trained for their mission, and talked of killing soldiers.

In a meeting recorded by one of the informants, suspect Mohamed Shnewer said ``they could utilize six or seven jihadists to attack and kill at least one hundred soldiers by using rocket-propelled grenades or other weapons,'' the complaint said. Shnewer said he and the others ``were not afraid to die.''

==Without a shred of irony, George Tenet would have us believe that the "they" are someone else, that the decision was -- and is -- the doing of secret, informal, unauthorized, incompetent officials and infiltrators. Not some otherwise innocent entity called the government.==

Surely, he is not the only one of this "crazy" view. Powell's top deputy called it a "cabal" centered on the VP's office.

And the emphasis should not be on the gossipy "verified" intelligence - one could "assemble" such a dossier on many a Middle Eastern country. The emphasis should be why, when no intelligence and military proffessionals called for a military response in the light of the current state of knowledge and risk, did our leaders take us to war.

No one has answered this question yet, and the hour is getting late. It would be an insult, in addition to an already existing tragedy, to have fought and lost a war, never knowning why you started it in the first place.

The decision to go to war was made before the 2000 election by the Neoconservatives, and was implemented after the Neoconsevative controlled Bush Administration won the elections. The war plan was based on Ricard Perle,& Company's "Clean Break" war plan (availble under that title On the web) designed for the Netanyahu government in 1996. My first indication of this plan came from a Washington Post Article connecting the Sharon government to the Bush Administration.
I thought Iraq had chemical weapons, and, probably some biological weapons. Big deal! Every country in the world of any size has some chemical weapons, and biological weapons are too tricky to use on a mass basis. I was not impressed.
You didn't need any Intelligence service to find out the facts. You can find enough information on the web and through various foreign news sources to chart a foreign policy. The bottom line is Iraq was contained and posed no threat to us. No war was an nessary.
You remember the Niger fuss over Uranium. Iraq, Jordan, Iran, and probably Syria have Uranium. They didn't need to go to Africa for it. I said probably Syria, because Iraq's most accessable source is near the Syrian border. This information came from a blogger on the Israeli paper Haaretz in a discussion about Jordan's proposed nuclear program.
There are no secrets if you look hard enough.