George Tenet's Georgetown speech on pre-war and pre-9-11 intelligence exposes contradictory nature of his critics' demands.

Feb. 5, 2004: PoliSat .Com's Political Satire/ Commentary* Daily Update # 01·· ™©·2004·(Home)·
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George Tenet's Georgetown speech on pre-war and pre-9-11 intelligence exposes contradictory nature of his critics' demands.·

Listening to George Tenet's speech at Georgetown University this morning, once could not avoid hearing the still-reverberating echoes of the post-9-11 critics screaming "why didn't they connect the dots." To anyone with rudimentary common sense, it should be apparent that the dots critics claim to have been "ignored" pre-9-11 required far more luck and educated guessing to "connect" than the twelve years' worth of overwhelmingly obvious "dots" begging for connection into conclusions about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and/or programs and/or intentions.

Tenet's speech presented a compelling argument supporting the decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom. As the CIA Director appointed by Clinton, Tenet is surely no partisan hack. He presented a coherent explanation of how the CIA has been spending the last seven years trying to recover from the crippling operational deficits created in part by the "peace dividend" curtailment of operational assets and missions after the end of the "cold war" and in part by political nonsense such as limitations imposed (under the Clinton Administration) at the behest of politically-correct pandering by politicians such as then-Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey-- e.g., barring CIA operatives from dealing with criminal/terrorist elements in their efforts to secure intelligence about criminal/terrorist elements. If this weren't so serious, it would be great material for a farce in three parts-- "Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil" about efforts to penetrate evil organizations. Such contradictions are so self-evident as to render the criticisms so transparently political as to demonstrate the folly of anyone's expectation for this election to comprise a serious examination of the long-term implications of starkly differing foreign policy strategies.

Listening to the same critics who mock the FBI for taking dismissive views of a Michigan field agent's requests to seize and search Zacarias Moussaoui's hard drive and of an Arizona agent's suspicions of young Arab men taking flying lessons now mocking the CIA/DIA/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush/Rice/Powell for not listening to the minority of intelligence analysts with dismissive views of intelligence sources comprising the twelve years of current and historical "dots" about Saddam Hussein's likely capabilities and intentions provokes a strong urge to vomit. Who, after 9-11, would deem it a common-sense view that we must allow gathering dangers to reach the point of "imminent threat" before taking effective military action to prevent the danger from maturing into a state of imminence? To hear the critics, one would think Bush has proposed, and would apply, such preventive action to demonstrably peace loving countries rather than to demonstrably rogue states (or territories not effectively governed by any state at all, such as Afghanistan was and many areas in Africa now are).

The John Kerry Split.·

These are issues on which Kerry must perform some nearly impossible intellectual gymnastics in order to satisfy his nearly-pacifist base without alienating the bulk of likely election voters seeking "gut" level confidence that a presidential candidate would not be dismissive of dots begging to be connected in the future. Can he do it or will the nearly impossible task of straddling this chasm cause a painful split? Can this Achilles Heel evade the slings and arrows of ideological passions of the left without alienating the common-sense likely voters in the middle in November? I think it unlikely barring a disaster in Iraq, against which we all (including Kerry, I'm sure) are hoping. --Jim Wrenn, Editor@PoliSat.Com.

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