TABLE FOR ONE : A scapegoat fights back
Posted on Wednesday, May 2, 2007
The Condi Rice vs. George Tenet bout
has turned into an Ali-Frazier
15-round heavyweight battle of epic proportions. Tenet, the former CIA director, best known for his infamous “ Slam Dunk” comment about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, has written a new book that’s out this week. It’s a loud blast at the Bush administration and especially at Condi Rice, the gullible little girl who grew up playing a piano in an Atlanta church. In his book entitled “ At The Center of The Storm ” he accuses Rice, then national security adviser, of ignoring his urgent warnings of “ imminent and spectacular” attacks on the United States by al Qaeda. Rice denies ignoring his warnings, of course.
Tenet leapt from his corner in the very first round on “ 60 Minutes” and fired a hard right toward the Bush administration, then feinted left by defending the CIA’s role in the handling of intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq. He asserts the CIA has been unfairly used as a scapegoat for administration failures. Dick Cheney has often used his “ Slam Dunk” statement as an excuse for invading Iraq — a war that still rages and by most objective observations is a total disaster with no foreseeable way out.
Rice bounced out of her corner by appearing on at least three of the major network Sunday morning talk shows and defending her role. One of her more interesting remarks, which has become a Republican talking point the past few years, was that “ EVERYBODY thought Saddam Hussien had weapons of mass destruction. ”
Stop the fight.
Everybody ? I don’t think so. I didn’t. Did you ? Everybody ? Not so Ms. Rice.
I’m not a CIA agent and did not sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I knew all along that Saddam didn’t have WMDs. “ Suspected” he did not might be a better word. But you get my drift.
Now how would a guy way out here in the Midwest know, or suspect, Saddam DID NOT have WMDs when the entire CIA and the Bush White House believed they did ?
Simple really. We’re all human beings, and human beings tend to “ know ” exactly what they want to “ know. ” We believe what we want to believe. We accept information that supports our a priori ideas about our world, belief system, political stance and so forth, and reject information that is contrary to what we want to believe or think we know.
In the fall of 2002 (when the Bush administration was beating the drums for the invasion of Iraq ) I read in the New York Times that no new information about WMDs had come out of Iraq since 1998. I filed that bit of information in the back of my mind. I believed that bit of news because it fit the framework of my beliefs.
Those who wanted to believe otherwise ignored that bit of news.
Also, in the fall of 2002 the New York Times reported that foreign intelligence held a former Iraqi soldier, code named Curveball, who had confirmed Saddam’s WMD programs. But a few days later another item appeared, this time in another news service (possibly Knight-Ridder ) which, according to the Bill Moyer’s recent PBS documentary, was the only news service, major network or newspaper who remained skeptical of WMDs, and held that Curveball was most likely a complete liar and fraud.
Because I was skeptical of WMDs and had come to suspect Bush and Cheney wanted to go to war in Iraq, I filed this bit of news away. Curveball is lying. I wonder who else is lying and why ?
It was fall 2002 when we first heard the name Ahmad Chalabi. He’s the Iraqi exile who became close friends with Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney more than 10 years ago. Chalabi convinced Wolfowitz and Cheney, and everyone else in the administration, that Saddam had WMDs, an invasion of Iraq would be easy, and the U. S. military would be viewed as liberators.
He didn’t have to convince Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense, who has advocated the spread of democracy to the Middle East through military action since his college days at the University of Chicago.
As it turns out, Chalabi was the primary source for Judith Miller’s many erroneous stories in the New York Times about WMDs. Cheney often quoted her stories on the big news shows. He (Chalabi ) was lying in hopes of Saddam’s eventual overthrow, whereby he would return to Iraq and be installed as president.
Those who believed in Bush wanted to believe the Times stories by Miller. But there were plenty of news items, bits and pieces, speculation and rumor to counter her slam dunkers. Many of us, millions actually, were very skeptical about the intelligence being presented to Bush because we were reading between the lines and allowing contrary information into the mix.
One of the most important and even crucial stories convincing some in the administration that Saddam was pursuing nuclear weapons was the “ uranium tubes from Niger” story. This proved to those who wanted to believe it that Saddam was actively working on nuclear weapons. Bush stated such in his 2002 State of the Union address. But I had already read (in a story in either Time or Newsweek ) an interesting little fact that some true believers seemed to ignore. The “ experts” who determined that these so-called uranium tubes could be used to assist in the creation of nuclear material were not nuclear experts and would not know the difference between uranium tubes and the lead water pipe running into your kitchen.
Being skeptical about the whole thing, I filed that bit of information away with dozens of other bits and pieces that contradicted the neo-con message. As it turned out, I, along with many others, were right.
In many ways I admire Condolezza Rice. She’s smart, talented, loyal to her boss and articulate. But she is so gullible. When Bob Schieffer suggested on “ Face The Nation” that the Bush White House intended to invade Iraq from the first day of the administration, she strongly denied such. I’m sure she is sincere in this denial because she certainly doesn’t want to believe that she has consistently allowed her intellect and skills to be used in the selling of an absurd war.
Perhaps she didn’t want to believe the Wolfowitz paper written in 1989 that suggested America would someday have to invade Iraq, remove Saddam Hussien, secure a democracy foothold in the oil rich Middle East. Maybe she didn’t want to believe the small network of good old oil boys and neo-cons had been manipulated for a decade by a sly Ahmad Chalabi into thinking Saddam had a nuclear bomb.
Stay tuned for the final rounds of the Condi Rice-George Tenet championship bout. Who will deal the knockout punch ? Will it be the crafty and quick Condi Rice with a series of sharp jabs, or will it be George Tenet, the big challenger, with a lucky haymaker ?
Grady Jim Robinson lives in Fayetteville. His column appears on Wednesdays.
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