[ExI] "Atlas Shrugged" film review

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis
Subject: Re: [ExI] "Atlas Shrugged" film review

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 10:01 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>>See George Tenet, ...

>...Sorry, spike, but I have to go with Samantha on this.  For his part,
Tenet is completely without credibility.  After 9/11, Bush kept him on as
CIA chief.  Excellent move on Bush's part.  Not cashiering Tenet -- in
effect "buying" Tenet -- made him a locked-in Bush loyalist, important,
because at the time, everyone in the Bush Cabal was a candidate to take the
fall for letting 9/11 happen.  Tenet had told Bush that, regarding Bin
Laden, "...the system was flashing red..."  Had he been fired, Tenet as
former intel chief, could have ripped Bush a new one by detailing how Bush
had turned his back on his R2P the US.  Tenet was lick-spittle from then on
regarding whatever Cheney (ie
Bush) wanted...  Best, Jeff Davis


Jeff the reason I don't buy that line of reasoning is that Tenet isn't a
Bush loyalist.  The closest I can come to that is that Tenet cares nothing
about Bush, Clinton or anyone other than Tenet.

I will agree his credibility is low, but this was damaged by himself, not by
any particular loyalty.  It certainly hurts one's credibility when the
preface of one's book contains a provably false story.  His book jumps on
every opportunity to blame any neocon he can find.

George Piro is more credible.  Piro isn't a high ranking guy, has no
political aspirations that I can tell, has no tracks to cover, and his
report came out only after Bush's influence had waned, so there was little
chance of political payback, good or bad.  His story pretty much agrees with
Tenet with regards to Saddam, and it has the ring of truth: when you have a
lousy hand, bluff.  In Middle East politics, even if you have a good hand,
bluff anyway.

Last September they aired some replays of the 9/11newscasts as it happened,
nine years before.  I didn't know it, but the newscasters were already
naming Bin Ladin even before the plane hit the second tower, and they
already knew he was a Saudi.  Tenet reports that the day after the attacks,
9/12, he met Richard Perle on the steps of the white house, and Perle was
blaming Saddam.  But Perle was in France at the time, and made it back to
Washington only days later, in the cargo net of a C130.

My theory is that Tenet and others led the press and Americans to believe
that the government blamed the attacks on Saddam, when the government
already knew the attacks were done by a Saudi-based group.  Evidence: the
story starting in the third paragraph of Tenet's book Center of the Storm.
Second evidence: George Piro's report regarding Saddam.

Saddam didn't have a WMD program to amount to anything, but he was trying to
make us believe that he did, because Iran was getting ready.  Had the US
thought Saddam did 9/11, we likely would have just stepped back and let Iran
have at them.  Saddma convinced enough players that he had a WMD program
that the strategy backfired.  Piro reports Saddam knew it was risky, but
desperation moves often are.

spike