First "Bombshell" From Tenet's New Book

Anyone who has followed the path America took to occupying Iraq without beating on a war drum could see the obvious. There is no way that Bush, Cheney or whomever within the Bush Administration seriously debated the threat of Saddam Hussein in the global war of terror (oops, should I have said "on" instead). Yet none of us were intimately close to the decision makers like George Tenet was. After being awarded the now-dubious Presidential Medal of Freedom, his explosive new book is going to do something revolutionary, it is going to tell the truth.

From The New York Times:

The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.

This book will definitely be an interesting read, if you can stomach 549 pages of George Tenet. Nevertheless, the key facts will be disseminated for those of us who are less likely to read the whole thing. Those key facts will turn a scapegoat thrown under the bus to the guy that might just be able to run over the Administration. Having been a member of the 'inner circle,' it might just do us some good.