A few months later, Tenet’s organization failed to connect the dots and allowed Al Qaeda to destroy the World Trade Centers -- killing 3,000 civilians.
A few years later, while assisting the Bush administration make its case for war against Iraq, he advised Bush to put all of his eggs in the WMD basket -- It was a “slam dunk” that Saddam had WMD. Bush believe his intelligence chief, and articulated the reasons for going to war by emphasizing Saddam’s stock pile of WMD and his links to terrorists. Ultimately, there were no WMD in Iraq and the international credibility of this nation (rightly or wrongly) was ruined.
Bush did not make up any of the facts he used in his rationale for war (i.e., “Bush Lied”). All this came from his Clinton appointed intelligence chief. Take a look at what Tenet told Congress in open session in February of 2003. Of course he talks about the WMD, but also look at the relationship between Iraq and terrorist organizations. Bush and Cheney did not make up a linkage that did not exist. He was just repeating what this Clinton appointee was telling him.
• Iraq is harboring senior members of a terrorist network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a close associate of Usama Bin Ladin. We know Zarqawi's network was behind the poison plots in Europe that I discussed earlier as well as the assassination of a US State Department employee in Jordan.
• Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bomb-making to al-Qa'ida. It also provided training in poisons and gasses to two al-Qa'ida associates; one of these associates characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.
Mr. Chairman, this information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence. It comes to us from credible and reliable sources. Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources. And it is consistent with the pattern of denial and deception exhibited by Saddam Hussein over the past 12 years.
Now, the Iraq war is sagging in the polls, a presidential election is looming, and another Clinton is running for that office. Lo and behold, for a 4 million dollar advance, Tenet writes a piece of revisionist history. The Bush administration was fixated on Iraq and wanted to invade Iraq even though it had nothing to do with 9/11. More red meat for those wanting to smear Bush Co.
But wait a second. The facts have not changed. Those Halliburton stoogies made their decision to invade Iraq based upon the information provided to them by Tenet. Tenet was the one telling Bush that Iraq had mobile chemical labs, uranium tubes, and stockpiles of anthrax. He was the one telling Bush that Zarqawi escaped from Afghanistan, was getting medical treatment in Baghdad and setting up a training camp inside Iraqi territory south of the no fly zone. Bush took the faulty intelligence provided to him by a Clinton appointee and adopted a course of conduct that was overwhelmingly support by both houses of Congress, regardless of party.
If we were fixated on Iraq after 9/11, it was entirely because of what Tenet was saying.
UPDATE: To make his point in his book, Tenet fabricated a conversation with Richard Perle on the day after 9/11. He attributes the following quote to Perle: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility." Of course, Perle was in France at the time and could not get back to Washington because all the flights had been cancelled. Furthermore, Perle denies the conversation ever took place. Undeterred, Tenet claims he may have the date wrong but still asserts the conversation took place, albeit on a later date. In this Washington Post article Perle shoots back and explains the same failures of intelligence that caused Tenet to write a book with faulty facts about a conversation that could not possibly have happened, led to the intelligence failures on his watch that have so harmed US credibility.