George Tenet

National Review has a compelling editorial that pretty much dismantles George Tenet's new posture regarding the Iraq war intelligence.

He's now claiming that his infamous "slam dunk" quote referred not to the intelligence itself, but to the public presentation of it. That's his defense? That he was uncertain of the intelligence, but told the president he was damn certain it could be sold to the public? This is supposed to make him look better?

NR is right to highlight this sentence from his book:

“Intelligence professionals did not try to tell policy makers what they wanted to hear, nor did the policy makers lean on us to influence outcomes.”

If that is the case, then we're back where we started, and where we'll be for the foreseeable future, grappling with two big problems:

1) The need to act with prudence and courage despite lacking perfect knowledge of security threats, which in all likelihood will often not meet the old standard of "imminent danger," like troops massing on our border. We'll most likely encounter less obvious dangers posed by non-state actors with access to WMD (including weapons not yet invented) that piggyback on the same globalized travel, communications, and financial systems that are spreading prosperity around the world. I believe George Bush has acted with prudence and courage in the wake of 9/11, including the invasion of Iraq. But even the greatest statesmen make big mistakes -- sometimes big mistakes -- and even their best decisions still have to be executed with the cooperation and support of his subordinates working together, doing the best they can. Some of these people will make mistakes also. Let's identify and fix those errors when we can -- but let us not fall back into paralysis.

2) From time to time, some of the Commander in Chief's subordinates, rather than doing their best to carry out national policy, will instead choose to engage in petty turf battles or even outright attempts to undermine the policy. Since we're dealing with human nature, this syndrome is as predictable as it is lamentable. But it seems to me that in situations described above, this kind of bad-faith behaviour can be more dangerous than ever, because there will always be good-faith disagreements within intelligence and defense circles. Presidents and other government and military executives have to make prudential decisions based on sometimes imperfect and/or conflicting information, and if someone is deliberately concealing, inflating, or falsifying something in the information stream, their ability to skew the decisions might be greatly magnified.

My great fear, of course, is that the intelligence failure re: Iraq WMD will lead to paralysis in future administrations. If this paralysis is combined with Vietnam Syndrome II, i.e., the nasty hangover we'll get if we accept defeat in Iraq, better fasten your seat belts -- we're in for a bumpy ride.