Tenet On Perle Conversation: ‘I May Have Been Off By A Couple Of Days But The Encounter Occurred’
Tenet On Perle Conversation: ‘I May Have Been Off By A Couple Of Days But The Encounter Occurred’
On 60 Minutes last night, George Tenet claims he ran into Pentagon adviser Richard Perle at the White House on the day after 9/11. Tenet says Perle was already urging at attack on Iraq:
“He said to me, ‘Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday, they bear responsibility.’ It’s September the 12th. I’ve got the manifest with me that tell me al Qaeda did this. Nothing in my head that says there is any Iraqi involvement in this in any way shape or form and I remember thinking to myself, as I’m about to go brief the president, ‘What the hell is he talking about?’” Tenet remembers.
Leaping to his fellow neoconservative’s defense, The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol challenged Tenet’s account as “an imaginary encounter.” Kristol writes, “Richard Perle was in France on that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United State until September 15.”
This morning on the Today Show, Tenet was confronted by Tom Brokaw about this contradiction. Tenet said, “I may have been off by a couple of days. The encounter occurred. The conversation occurred. … So I may have gotten the days wrong, but I know I got the substance of that conversation correct.” Watch it:
Perle has told The Weekly Standard that he “categorically denies” ever having mentioned Iraq to Tenet in the days after 9/11. But Tenet noted that his recollection matches what Perle was saying publicly soon after 9/11 — that Bush should take action against Iraq.
On September 20, 2001, Perle signed a letter — along with 40 fellow participants of the Project for the New American Century — addressed to President Bush that stated the following:
[E]ven if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.
Another co-signer of that letter? Bill Kristol. Read it here.
UPDATE: Weekly Standard’s blog points to Tenet’s quote from his book:
On the day after 9/11, he [Tenet] adds, he ran into Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative and the head of the Defense Policy Board, coming out of the White House. He says Mr. Perle turned to him and said: “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.”
Transcript:
BROKAW: Let me just clean up something here at the very beginning. You have a very dramatic opening to the book. You have Richard Perle, a well-known neo-conservative, who is an adviser to the Pentagon. You say you see him leaving the White House the day after 9/11 saying Iraq has to bear responsibility for this. What happened yesterday, they have to pay the price.
Overnight, as you know, Richard Perle said, Not possible. I was in France.
TENET: Well, Tom, I know the conversation occurred. I may have been off by a couple of days. The encounter occurred. The conversation occurred. It reflects what he has said publicly soon after 9/11.
So I may have gotten the days wrong, but I know I got the substance of that conversation correct.
BROKAW: And you wanted to leave the impression very strongly that there was a strong core group that came into office determined to go after Iraq.
TENET: Tom, it’s ironic that in the days or weeks after 9/11, Iraq would already be on an agenda item for some people.
BROKAW: And from the CIA point of view, at that point there was no connection whatsoever between Iraq and the attacks of 9/11?
TENET: No, there was none at all.
Sort Comments By: Top Rated | Date
54 Responses to “Tenet On Perle Conversation: ‘I May Have Been Off By A Couple Of Days But The Encounter Occurred’”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Think ProgressContact Us
Donate
FACTS? LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!
April 30th, 2007 at 11:22 amWhen the truth comes out on Faux Noise Network, we’ll learn that it wasn’t Richard Pearle who said this to Tenet, but actually it was Bill Clinton.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:23 amIt was Nancy Pelosi who actually approached Tenant….
I don’t think that it’s been any big secret that this Administration has had an obsession with all things Iraq.
Well, maybe a big secret to the media…..
April 30th, 2007 at 11:26 amPerle lives in France.
That should tell you enough.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:27 amTenet, Perle, and Kristol are equally guilty for aiding, abbeting, and encouraging this fiasco. While the timeline put forth by Perle might be accurate, Tenet’s story is believeable in that it doesn’t fall far from Perle’s stated positions and the events occouring at that time. Kristol is simply continuing his efforts to aid, abet, and encourage the war.
What a bunch of whores.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:29 amThe book starts with a sloppily researched fact. Kinda taints what follows, eh?
April 30th, 2007 at 11:29 amintelligence ?
April 30th, 2007 at 11:29 amDoes the government currently provide personal security for any of these clowns?The last thing I want to do is have tax dollars pay for protecting these stooges. Dick Cheney’s airspace restriction over his little bungalow on the Eastern Shore is way too much already.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:32 amHey Brokaw !
Is the exact date really that important when Tenant is just confirming the same things we heard from Richard Clark and John Dean years ago?
April 30th, 2007 at 11:32 amThe PNAC people wrote a similar letter to Clinton on Jan 26, 1998 regarding Saddam and Iraq. And you look at some of the names that signed it, and who among them Bush put in his Administration upon election, and it was inevitable that we were going to invade Iraq someday, 9/11 or not.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:35 amI read a great new moniker for the GOPers who support the PNAC/Cheney crowd; Banana-Republicans. Thank you Scott Horton.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:37 amThe book starts with a sloppily researched fact. Kinda taints what follows, eh?
Comment by Badmoodman — April 30, 2007 @ 11:29 am
They have in the past and will in the future, muddy the truth so much that it will be difficult for any historian to sort through it.
The bottom line is Bush used lies to get Americans on side with the decision to oust Saddam militarily and not many in Congress or the Media were interested in determining the truth about their claims. In hindsight, some media and most demoracts in Congress know they were hoodwinked. For the love of Pete, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
April 30th, 2007 at 11:39 amif perle “categorically denies” making the iraq connection to tenet in the days immediately following 9.11, then why has he steadfastly and consisently made the connection ever since? did anyone see his PBS documentary in which he confronts a protestor and says the very same things about hussein and 9.11?
unbelievable…..
April 30th, 2007 at 11:41 amTenet et al, ya’ll just keep chumming the waters……that’s it…
Heh.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:44 amTenet. Perle. Kristol.
I’ve just got one thing to say:
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
April 30th, 2007 at 11:45 amPatriots abound!
April 30th, 2007 at 11:46 amAfter almost 6 years without terrorism in the U.S., it looks like the Bush anti-terrorism strategy made alot of sense. But, as many of you are found of saying, don’t let the facts get in the way of your arguments. Stay the course with your ‘just leave terrorists alone and they won’t bother us’ strategy. Then instead of lamenting hundreds of dead U.S. soldiers ever month, we can be horrified by the tens (or hundreds) of thousands of U.S. civilian causalties by future domestic attacks. Good plan!
April 30th, 2007 at 11:51 amI’ve just got one thing to say:
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
Comment by joe — April 30, 2007 @ 11:45 am
Of course if you’re talking “physical” fighting they’d have to find subordinates to handle it for them.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:52 amOkay okay, we’ve known since before Junior’s invasion that it was all lies.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:52 amWe’ve been over it and over it.
Will they ever be impeached and pay for their crimes ?
Sure doesn’t look like it.
Looks like the dems don’t want the world to ever come to the realization that everyone knows.
It’s like they want the deception to continue.
Universe forbid that an American government would do such a thing !
Even this long after the fact.
Every signer should go through a trial and potentially go to prison. Diverting America away from Osama to Iraq appears to be a conspiracy.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:52 amit’s obvious Tenet hates America, was never a *sniff* Republican anyway, and probably wants Saddam back in power.
[/kristol]
April 30th, 2007 at 11:54 amComment by paul
The lack of evidence is not proof.
The absence of an attack proves nothing. If it did then Clinton would be proof that Clintons way have handling terrorism worked out great.
But from watching the show The Power of Nightmares video.google.com/videosearch?q=the+power+of+nightmares&hl=en
I can see that the neocons and the rightwingers come together nicely because to them the absence of proof is proof in and of itself that something even MORE frightening is going on… which is the EXACT opposite of how reasoning and scientific and logical thought works.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:57 amterrorists alone and they won’t bother us’ strategy. Then instead of lamenting hundreds of dead U.S. soldiers ever month, we can be horrified by the tens (or hundreds) of thousands of U.S. civilian causalties by future domestic attacks. Good plan!
Comment by paul — April 30, 2007 @ 11:51 am
Well then you’ll since Bush is doing such a great job why was a CIA advisor just on MSNBC saying Bin Laden is trying to acquire a nuclear weapon he plans on using in the US. Isn’t he the guy Bush wasn’t that interested in finding anymore?
April 30th, 2007 at 11:59 amIt’s not the only fabrication in the book. Tenet’s a liar, like a ex girlfriend, making up stuff as he goes along.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:03 pmPaul,
your post relies on the faulty assumption that terror acts wont occur as we as we engage in perpetual war. Fortunately, Americans have wised up about that.
What is to stop a terror cell from executing an attack on the homeland? Intelligence, not war. You gotta think for yourself a little there big guy.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:04 pm“future domestic attacks”
that’s right, just keep ‘em worried…..don’t ask any questions or anything, just be worried about “future” attacks.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:09 pmAnd we are supposed to believe Kristol why?
April 30th, 2007 at 12:10 pmNow they turn their viciousness on each other… good stuff.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:26 pmEverybody who signed this PNAC document or the “Rebuilding America’s Defenses document need to be tried as war criminals.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:30 pmSuch brilliant minds. I’m glad our CIA was run by someone who was so good with facts.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:51 pmSo if Tenet is off by a few days, how come he quotes Perle as saying ” “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday“?
Short answer: Tenet is a liar who is just making stuff up.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:59 pmOkay okay, we’ve known since before Junior’s invasion that it was all lies.
No, the “Bush Lied” meme is itself a lie. You are the lairs. Even John Edwards admitted that, after the senate intel briefing, he had doubts about the WMD question and went back to former Clintion administration officials to get the “truth”. And they told him the same thing Bush did - Saddam does indeed have a WMD program.
BTW, how can you ignore 500 chemical arty shells, some degraded some not? How can you ignore all the Iraqi nuclear scientists working over in Libya on nukes, before we shut that down?
Also, please don’t read the Clinton Iraqi Liberation Act. Your head will certainly explode.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:05 pmIn his 60 Minutes interview, Tenet came off as a total pussy. Suddenly, he’s found his moral compass and his spine–now that he’s got a book to pitch.
And Scott Pelli came off as a guy who could use a few remedial reading classes, or perhaps a quick “Hooked On Phonics” course. George TENANT? Come on, Scott, if you’re going to take the time to interview the guy, at least learn how to pronounce his friggin’ name.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:35 pmLet’s face it - NONE of those attempting to debunk Tenet’s facts have clean hands. These are the members of PNAC and their “another pearl harbor incident” concoction for which they already had the wording of the Patriot Act composed long before 911 occurred.
Wolfowitz, Bush, Cheney, Armitage, Perle, Bill Kristol, Rumsfeld, Khalilizad, and Bolton! THESE MEN NEED TO BE BROUGHT TO ACCOUNT TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE! THESE ARE THE MASTERMINDS OF THE COUP ON OUR DEMOCRACY. THESE ARE THE ‘EVIL WITHIN’.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:43 pmTenet came off as a jerk on 60 Minutes. They are all running around trying to save their reputations by trashing each other. Not that I care, but it would be foolish to think that they aren’t all spinning it their own way. Truth is they all sold their souls for a taste of power - and now that everything is falling apart they are deserting the ship of state.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist the rats=ship of state metaphor, mea culpa)
April 30th, 2007 at 1:46 pmLet’s face it: George Tenet is making a ploy to save his ass when the hammers of hell fall on those responsible for lying to the american people about WMD’s and the pretext for war in Iraq.
As he attempts to exonerate himself, however, he further indicts Cheney, Bush and Rice for whom “impeachment marches” are taking place all over this country. The people want them removed from office because they are pathological liars.
Unless/until we, the people, do the next right thing which is to show the rest of the world that we are not George Bush (very far from it, thankfully) and remove him from office immediately, our reputation will tank even further. Look - his numbers are 28% and dropping like the Titanic - Cheney’s are even worse. The people no longer respect any of them. The people no longer listen to anything their lying mouths spout off. They’re “reign of terror and lies” is coming to a screeching halt.
They can try to spin things now till the cows come home; the damage to their reputation has already been done and the people loathe them all.
Then again, the longer they remain in office and targets of multiple, ongoing scandals (with many, many more to come - after all 6 years of debouchery, lying, theft, etc. will bring us a “scandal a day” at this point)….the more resolve the people will have about NEVER electing another Republican into ANY office in this country for a VERY LONG TIME.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:48 pmToday’s GOP = Rats fleeing from the sinking ship
April 30th, 2007 at 1:49 pmAfter almost 6 years without terrorism in the U.S., it looks like the Bush anti-terrorism strategy made alot of sense. But, as many of you are found of saying, don’t let the facts get in the way of your arguments.
Comment by paul — April 30, 2007 @ 11:51 am
You’ve got to be kidding! Remember that wee Anthrax-in-the-mail bit of fun? Maybe that’s too far back to remember for that rotted-out thing which passes for your “brain”. OK, lets try something from the past two weeks then, how about that bomb planted at that Planned Parenthood clinic in Austin last Friday?!
April 30th, 2007 at 1:52 pmAll I can say that Tenet has effectively done is spread the blood of those killed in Iraq to his own, complicit hands. While he sat there and said nothing, knowing full well that the administration was lying to congess and the people, the war emerged, resulting in now some 3,500 unnecessary deaths. I’d say that now PNAC members, (Perle, Wolfowitz, Kristol, Cheney, Bush, Armitage, Rumsfeld, etc) share the blood of our fallen heroes who died in vain for a twisted neonazi pipedream of a few very sick, twisted, pathological individuals.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:53 pmPaul/Troll: Nice try! But there are intelligent folks on the TP threads, as you’ve so handily underestimated. I guess you never studied statistics or logic in your obvious lack of educational background, did you? It doesn’t work that way: When something does not occur, you cannot simply make irrelevant assumptions that it would have occurred but did not because some factor (anyone can interject whatever the “factor du jour” might be) was in progress….
Nice try, troll-dweeb but your argument is inane, unsupportable logically and statistically, and you’re continuing to make an unadulterated fool of yourself on these threads.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:56 pmNice try, troll-dweeb but your argument is inane, unsupportable logically and statistically, and you’re continuing to make an unadulterated fool of yourself on these threads.
Comment by veritas — April 30, 2007 @ 1:56 pm
Not only does “paul” peddle these logical fallacies, as you and others aptly pointed out, but on top of that the very foundation on which he bases his fits of illogic is false. Terrorism did occur multiple times within the US in the last 6 years, except that in the neocon “minds” it did not count because it was either directed at the “wrong” people (i.e. liberal media personalities etc) or done by the “wrong” perpetrators (i.e. certifiable members of the Christianist fundie wingnuttery).
So he is wrong to the square power, an impressively dumb feat, one that could be likened to building castles out of sand in the middle of a swamp.
April 30th, 2007 at 2:07 pmBTW, how can you ignore 500 chemical arty shells, some degraded some not?
Comment by Fen — April 30, 2007 @ 1:05 pm
You mean those shells which have been burried since the Iraq/Iran war out of which by some fluke 1 or 2 shells survived partially viable (Iraq was never able to manufacture proper chemical weapons, their best efforts resulted in 45-60% purity when the shells were brand new and deterioration occured rapidly within months, according to UNMOVIC)? Is that supposed to be the “evidence” of an active “WMD program”?
Excuse us while we laugh you out of this thread.
How can you ignore all the Iraqi nuclear scientists working over in Libya on nukes, before we shut that down?
Again, you mean that “program” comprised of one disfunctional centrifuge, whereby the estimated “delivery” date for the nukes was somewhere between the Sun burning out and the End Of the Universe?
And what do you mean by “we shut down”?! Do you mean that bit where Khadafi figured out that he can cash on (fuguratively and literally) the prevailing political winds and decided to publicly throw the rusty, useless junk out, cunning con artist that he is?
If so, you are quite a comedian.
April 30th, 2007 at 2:36 pmhow can you ignore 500 chemical arty shells, some degraded some not?
Comment by Fen — April 30, 2007 @ 1:05 pm
This one has already been debunked so many times it’s hardly worth to do it again.
So, for the benefit of the other posters on ThinkProgress let me briefly say that these 500 shells were found buried, in different sites, a few at a time, over the course of three years -between the wake of the invasion and June of last year when Santorum made this very claim, and when it was hyped by (surprise, surprise!) FoxNews.
These are hardly the stockpiles of WMD the Bush administration peddled as the reason for invading Iraq. As a matter of fact, the US Defense Department already said that these were not the weapons the US was looking in Iraq and not the reason for the invasion.
Media Matters has a good run-down on this old, tired, debunked claim.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:09 pmThe criticalthinker cannot take the 9-11 lie any longer!
I once saw an episode of Columbo where DISPROVED that man died of natural causes, because his shoe laces were not tied from the man’s perspective, but from the perspective like that of a mother tying a child’s shoes, therefore no spin doctor nor lying expert can convince CRITICAL THINKING people that the man tied his own shoes before dying.
h t t p : / / 9 1 1 r e s e a r c h . w t c 7 . n e t / w t c / e v i d e n c e / p h o t o s / s t r e e t s 1 . h t m l
The 50 micron 45% silicon fine powder in the above link DISPROVES that the WTC was demolished by gravity energy, because there is no other way than explosive energy to created such a fine silicon powder from intact concrete and glass in the less than 15 seconds that the WTC towers went from whole to pieces, therefore no spin doctor nor lying expert can convince CRITICAL THINKING people that the WTC was demolished by gravity energy.
Everyone is familiar with shoe TYING, so the DISPROOF cannot be ignored, while only people educated in engineering such as myself are familiar with material MILLING, so the DISPROOF is ignored.
If you go to an engineering school or concrete manufacturer and watch them fail concrete an INTACT piece of concrete, you will notice that it breaks into sand sized particles, and in order to turn it into a 50 micron fine powder you would have to MILL those particles.
Even if you drop concrete from 30,000 jet crusing altitude, it will still fail into sand size particles, just like you cannot make flour from wheat kernels by dropping them off a tall building!
Even if you put more tha X pounds of weight on a cubic inch of concrete that has a compression strength X pounds per inch, it will still fail into sand size particles, just like you cannot make flour from wheat kernels by setting them under a heavy rock!
The reason you cannot make fine powders simply by dropping material, is that the material’s collision with the ground results in the small particles recoiling upward instead of them being breaking into smaller and smaller pieces, no matter how much FORCE they hit the ground with.
The reason you cannot make fine powders simply by setting weight on material, is that the surfaces are not perfectly even, so small particles lay in the hills and the valleys between the surfaces, therefore they CANNOT be broken into smaller particles because NO FORCE is being applied to them, no matter how much FORCE is being applied to surfaces.
MILLING can be done by the scraping of abrasives which chew off one fine powder particle at a time, or done by the crushing of surfaces that are SMOOTHER than the desired fine powder particle size.
Since the environment in the demolished WTC towers was not like a MILL, and MILLING always takes more than 15 seconds to generate an appreciable amount of fine powder, WE KNOW FOR A FACT THAT THE 50 MICRON 45% SILICON FINE POWDER THAT IS GIVING THE FIRST RESPONDERS SILICOSIS LUNG DISEASE HAD TO BE CREATED BY EXPLOSIVES, BECAUSE THERE IS NO OTHER WAY FOR THAT POWDER TO BE CREATED IN THE TIME AND ENVIRONMENT OF A DEMOLISHING WTC TOWER.
I will give my house, car, money, clothes, and every worldly possession to the first person lying expert or otherwise who can turn an intact piece of concrete or glass into a 50 micron fine powder in less than 15 seconds without explosives, even though they would not need my money, because they will have won a Nobel prize and would have a zillion dollar patent for making milling obsolete!
So if you choose to believe the official LIE, and ignore the TRUTH that the WTC towers were brought down with explosives, by IGNORING the IRRFUTABLE evidence that the critical thinker has given you, it simply means your emotions overrule your logic, and your psyche cannot handle the ramifications of this IRRFUTABLE evidence, so you close your eyes and keep believing that it was not an inside job when the evidence OBVIOUSLY says otherwise to CRITICAL THINKING people like Columbo.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:18 pmGrgrrr - As none of your accepted sources has searched all the sites….your claims might amount to nothing more than pulling the trigger a bit soon - a common problem. Of course, your “certainty” is based on limited info…..
April 30th, 2007 at 3:24 pmIraq as a country couldn’t produce enough electricity to run a Nuclear Program! The country as a whole, only produced roughly 25% of what is needed to sucessfully run the program. So figure it out where was the other 75% going to come from,their enemies?
April 30th, 2007 at 3:27 pmAs none of your accepted sources has searched all the sites….
Comment by valiant venus — April 30, 2007 @ 3:24 pm
My “accepted” sources include the Iraq Survey Group, that already concluded that Iraq did not possess stockpiles of WMD by the time of the invasion.
I also count the Department of Defense that already said these 500 degraded shells were not the reason why the Us invaded Iraq.
your claims might amount to nothing more than pulling the trigger a bit soon - a common problem. Of course, your “certainty†is based on limited info…..
And your “certainty” that Iraq did have stockpiles of WMD amount to nothing more than speculation and wishful thinking, since you have no evidence on which to base your belief, and it’s rooted on even less than limited info. As a matter of fact, it’s rooted on no evidence at all.
You see, to show that Hussein was in possession of stockpiles WMD (the kind that posed a threat to the world) by the time of the invasion, all there is to do is find one stockpile. It has not been found in spite of the time and money spent post-invasion looking for these WMD.
If anything, you should fault your Dear (mis)Leader for allowing the Pentagon to disband the team that was looking for them, back in 2004.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:46 pmAll these Neocons care about is Israeli interest, truth be known their probably bad for Israel too.
April 30th, 2007 at 6:09 pmLet’s be frank…Tenet is a knucklehead. Getting this key fact wrong in his book is a perfect example of that, but the larger issue was his apparent desire to become part of the fraternity after 9/11…that vision of him sitting behind Colon Powell is a damning piece of evidence indicating that he could well have gotten what he deserved here. Not saying that he deserved to be singled out…indeed, many should have fallen further than he has, but when karma comes to play, gaffes like these are its calling card!
April 30th, 2007 at 7:38 pmThe book starts with a sloppily researched fact. Kinda taints what follows, eh?
Comment by Badmoodman — April 30, 2007 @ 11:29 am
The book ?
Take a look at the TP article you are reading.
“I may have got the dates wrong but the substance was accurate. Now let’s move on to discussing the consensus opinion of my agency that Iraq had no WMDs or al Qaeda links which I portrayed as the complete opposite during my tenure.”
Did you not notice you were reading the 4th article in a row from TP trying to disprove an accurate article by Bill Kristol where Tenet becomes a bigger liar in each ?
What’s next ?
“I know when I talked to Perle because I was washing the blood of a hobo off my hands and I only stab them on Thursdays.”
ThinkProgress headline: Tenet Refutes Perle on Timeline, Dates Confirmed.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:05 pmHow many years is it going to take you idiots to figure that out ? 3 and counting apparently.
Here’s a question, if the US had 20 people dedicated to the Russia desk before WW2 and disbanded it after WW2 was that also an indication that they weren’t taking Communism seriously enough ?
Or was the fact that the majority of intel and Pentagon resources took over from that one tiny desk more than enough compensation.
This is like complaining that kids entertainment isn’t being taken seriously when a swing set got replaced with Disney World.
There are single squads of special rangers in Pakistan larger than the OBL unit was. There are more people flying drones with joysticks this very second in search of OBL than there ever were on the OBL desk.
There were about 7.2 people committing internet crime in 1990. If there was one guy and a stapler dedicated to policing this back then would it still be appropriate to run all intel, cases, crimes, tips and planning via him today ?
Because that is what the function of the OBL unit was. A clearinghouse for all OBL stuff right down to rumours of anything even remotely related to him.
You are actually moaning about not having a war czar, straight after pointing out how stupid and ridiculously useless such a position would be.
3 years. Wise the fk up already.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:20 pmYou are actually moaning about not having a war czar,
Comment by Kilo — May 1, 2007 @ 12:20 pm
No, I am not. Reading comprehension issues?
straight after pointing out how stupid and ridiculously useless such a position would be.
It is useless and redundant, as many of its functions should be performed by the Commander in Chief.
3 years. Wise the fk up already.
And for all your blather and hypothetical scenarios, fact remains that 3 years after disbanding the WMD-searching teams, and 4 (yes, four!) years after this disastrous invasion started, those infamous WMD have not been found. The ISG actually declared they found no evidence Iraq had WMD stockpiles by 2003.
I’d say: It’s been four years. You really need to wise the fk up already.
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:22 amNo. What other function could you have possibly intended for those 50 CIA staff in the OBL unit if not overseeing the rest of the CIA, NSA, DIA, Pentagon, DOJ, etc who are dedicating 100s of thousands of staff and associates to al Qaeda ?
If you weren’t thinking they would be in the same oversight role they were in before 9/11 it is hard to imagine what you were proposing.
Apparently nothing. You clearly have NFI what you are complaining about.
And I guess here you’re not calling for the sacking of the joint chiefs.
Since you think the Presidents, uniquely unqualified to do so, perform oversight functions for wars, it really matters little what you think.
Clearly everything here is over your head.
OMG did you hear Porter Goss stepped down as the head of the CIA !!???!!! That must mean there’s nobody running it OMG !!!
Yeah if only the OBL unit could have found those too, in between running 2 wars.
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:10 amThey would have been 50 very busy people.
If you weren’t thinking they would be in the same oversight role they were in before 9/11 it is hard to imagine what you were proposing.
Comment by Kilo — May 2, 2007 @ 9:10 am
Wha?
I was specifically talking about the military unit that was formed after the invasion to hunt for WMD in Iraq and that was disbanded in 2004.
If there is anyone who has no clue what I was responding to it’s you, and you obviously didn’t even bother to follow the link.
And I wasn’t proposing anything, I was pointing out a fact: The fact that the active hunt for WMD in Iraq came to a halt, and that the ISG already said there was no evidence that Hussein had WMD prior to the invasion.
Apparently nothing. You clearly have NFI what you are complaining about.
Complaining? Who is complaining? What am I complaining about?
And I guess here you’re not calling for the sacking of the joint chiefs.
Er, no, I am not.
[…]it really matters little what you think.
Then why did you even respond?
Clearly everything here is over your head.
Clearly you still have no understanding of anything I’ve said, and have to resort to strawmen arguments.
Yeah if only the OBL unit could have found those too, in between running 2 wars.
“We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:15 pm