George Tenet says the United States needs to revitalize the Palestinian-Israeli peace effort and do a better job leveraging its own diplomatic and economic strength to offset Iran's growing influence in the Middle East. You remember George Tenet, don't you? Mister "Slam Dunk"? "George, how confident are you?" President Pinhead once asked Tenet, in an exchange depicted in Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack." "Don't worry, it's a slam-dunk," Tenet said. Pinhead was asking him how certain he was that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. For this now catastrophic misunderstanding of intelligence, a war is currently being waged. George's new tack has been to show up all over the place with a cavalier shred of shame, without his Presidential Medal of Freedom, to say "Ooops! My bad."
Did I mention that he has a book to sell? The one he said he had a "historical obligation" to write? "At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA" goes into great detail about all the reasons why Americans should continue to live in fear: thwarted poison gas attacks, attempts to buy nuclear material, face-to-face meetings between Osama bin Laden and the President of Pakistan weeks before 9/11. Al-Qaeda is everywhere.
That is, if you can believe anything this guy says. The former director of the Central Intelligence Agency relied heavily on the ironically named informant "Curveball", bringing his unfortunate connection with sports cliches to two - one baseball and one basketball. On Monday, the State Department released a report saying that Iran remains the biggest supporter of terrorism around the world, and yet we find ourselves mired via Tenet's own advice in Iraq.
When asked why it took so long for all of these revelations to come to light, Tenet said it took him time to compose his thoughts and write his book after so much time in a job that was a "swirling cauldron" every day. Whether or not he's pushing for another medal, it's probably best to take whatever George Tenet has swirling around in his cauldron with a grain of salt. A very large, industrial lump of sodium chloride.
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