Slam drunk: George Tenet cursed neocon "Jews" from prince Bandar's pool

Wherein late-stage empire imitates reality TV:

Atlantic reporter Jeffrey Goldberg recently picked up a copy of Patrick Tyler’s forthcoming book, A World of Trouble, which focuses on “America’s tortured relations with the Middle East.” Goldberg says that the book’s prologue contains a “whopper of a scene” featuring former CIA director George Tenet “drunk on scotch, flailing about Prince Bandar’s Riyadh pool, screaming about the Bush Administration officials who were just then trying to pin the Iraq WMD fiasco on him.” Tyler reports that Tenet also “mocked the neoconservatives in the Bush administration” as “the Jews“: According to one witness, he mocked the neoconservatives in the Bush administration and their alignment with the right wing of Israel’s political establishment, referring to them with exasperation as, “the Jews.” [Think Progress]

Tenet is bitter towards the Bush administration after getting unceremoniously kicked out of the house in 2004. He believes he was unfairly blamed for the invasion of Iraq.

Tenet famously said the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk"--a remark he claims the Bush administration twisted out of context.

Tenet probably has  a point: The Saddam's non-existent WMD program was just one of several redundant rationalizations that the Bush administration floated simultaneously to justify a plan they hatched before Bush even took office.

So, the fact that Tenet mishandled the intelligence makes him just one guilty party among many.

Comments

[TB]

Someone should give him the Dick Nixon Medal Medal for Hebrew Advancement.

[commie77]

Isn't this just all complete BS? See statement from Abe Foxman:
http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/12/foxman_to_tenets_rescue.php

And the people who were in the room also say it is BS:
http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/12/tenets_denial.php

Ah well, never let the facts get in the way of a good story...