-
I think you could file this one under "Sumo Wrestling Comes to America." George Tenet, the former head of the CIA, is about to release his tell-all book, At the Center of the Storm. And apparently he's got his sights on going belly-to-belly with a certain Richard Bruce Cheney.
In what is being called "A Battle Royale," Tenet will be out in force, defending his---and his agency's---performance before the Iraq war.
In other words, this is not the kind of headache the White House wants to be dealing with right now. Not with everything else collapsing around it. Bush and Cheney are going to be dragged through the WMD mud again. Better yet, Tenet is throwing a nasty wrench into Bush and Cheney's rah-rah campaign to garner support for their "surge."
And how fun is it that you and I have front-row seats for the whole thing? It's gonna be frickin' beautiful watching these bigwigs spittin' at each other.
Oh, and Condi gets a cream pie in the face, too.
Below is a segment of The Chris Matthews Show that I transcribed this evening. It offers a juicy preview of the mud-slinging to come. Call it a potent shot of bloggerdorphine.
From The Chris Matthews Show, April 15:
Chris Matthews: In [the book], Tenet takes on vice president Dick Cheney. Cheney has maintained that Tenet told President Bush in December of 2002, two weeks before Bush decided to invade Iraq, that there was a "slam dunk" case to be made that Saddam Hussein possessed those banned weapons. But now Tenet denies ever making that claim. David, this is a big fight. It's pushback time. How tough is this book gonna be?
[Washington Post columnist] David Ignatius: It's gonna be very tough. George Tenet has been doing a slow burn ever since he left the CIA. He's been angrier and angrier as he saw himself being essentially made the fall guy on WMD in Iraq. And he's gonna come back saying he and his agency, the CIA, were pushed, again and again, by Cheney and Cheney's people to give him the answers that they wanted. And he's got chapter and verse on that. [...] He will tell a story that I think will make people's hair curl. But he's been waiting a long time to tell this.
And he'll also say---this is a very important part of this---that, on the question of what would happen in Iraq after the invasion, the CIA pretty consistently warned [Bush], "You have trouble ahead. You will not be able to unite this country. Sunnis and Shiites are gonna be 'at daggers.'"
Chris Matthews: Andrea, what do you got?
NBC's Andrea Mitchell: He'll also attack and criticize Condoleezza Rice, who has denied a critical briefing before 9/11...a July briefing. They actually have the slide show that they showed her, where they were telling her that al Qaeda was threatening.
Matthews: So will the president come back and attack him? Is that what's coming in the next couple weeks---a Battle Royale---the CIA, the president, and the vice president?
Mitchell: Absolutely. You're gonna be re-fighting both sides of who lost Iraq, who lost the WMD struggle. It might get pretty brutal.
Of course, leave it to Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to throw a little water on the fire:
Tucker: I think the public largely believes that Dick Cheney and President Bush politicized intelligence to take us into the war. And that's one of the reasons George Tenet's book is a little late. He can't save his reputation. People have already made their decision---he was part of the administration that politicized this war.
But it'll still be fun to watch. The fireworks start around April 30th.
Sweet...
-