Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

The Best Tenet Can Do?

As expected George Tenet gave his "rebut" Kay's charges of dubius intelligence from the CIA.
But it was a weak rebut.

quote:
"Let me be clear: analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs, and those debates were spelled out in the estimate.

"They never said there was an imminent threat.

So much for Powel's UN speech.

But after that Tenet offered this Piece of old garbage.

quote:

Mr. Tenet went on to say the analysts reached their conclusions through "three streams of information, none perfect, but important."

He said everyone knew that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons in the 1980's and 1990's and that Mr. Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran and his own people "on at least 10 different occasions." Mr. Hussein also launched missiles against Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel, Mr. Tenet noted.

And in the early 1990's "we saw that Iraq was just a few years away from a nuclear weapon."

"This was not a theoretical program," he added. "It turned out that we and other intelligence services of the world had significantly underestimated his progress," referring to Saddam Hussein.



Only the deaf, dumb and blind would think this is news. We know where are how Hussein got his chemical weapons to use against both Iran and the Kurds. So exactly what kind of "surprise" is he talking about? As for the Scud misiles. We know these are North Korean designs so again...what is new here? Iraq had no real home grown weapons programs. everything they had they bought somewhere. As for the Nuclear "program" with Israel flying in and bombing any nuclear facility Iraq tried to build, exactly what real nuclear program is he talking about? The even found his "nuclear material" which was looted by the locals (who should be dying of radiation poisoning soon). The only nuclear program Iraq could have is what it could afford to buy. These folks must think we're all stupid...yes they do.

Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/international/middleeast/05CND-INTE.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1076002734-qiqvU2aWM0f0vUhouSMm4A