George Tenet was the Johnnie Cochrane of Dubya's rigging the case for WMD.
Let's look back on Bush and Tenet in December of 2002 - as reported by Woodward - in which Bush questioned the intelligence about WMD.
During the campaign, Rove presented this as if Tenet was convincing Bush that the intelligence indicated a need to go to war. However, based on what we now know, even if this conversation happened as reported, this is NOT a conversation about whether to go to war. This is a conversation about whether the FIXED INTELLIGENCE is good enough. Bush is not asking whether there is enough intelligence to justify sending our troops off to die and kill. He is asking whether he can convince the American people to go to war based on intelligence that he KNOWS HAS BEEN FIXED.
It's akin to OJ asking Cochrane: "All you're going to say is 'If it doesn't fit, you must aquit.'; That's all you've got?" OJ knows he did it. He knows he is lying. He just can't believe that people are going to buy Cochrane's bullshit. And then Cochrane says. "Trust me Dubya - er Juice - it's a Slam Dunk."
Bob Woodward owes it to America to go back to his notes about that meeting - based on what we now know - and tell us what was really going on.
According to Time Magazine, in March of 2002, Bush told a group of Senators who were meeting with Condi Rice: "Fuck Sadaam, We're taking him out."
All assertions that the Bush Administration fixed the pre-war intelligence must begin here.
Add to that the recent revelation of the Downing Street Dossier which indicates that Bush was fixing intelligence to the decision to go to war.
Then add Walter Pincus' article indicating that Analysts who erroneously assessed that Sadaam had WMD were actually given job performance awards in each of the last three years.
As Josh Marshall says:
Almost across the board in this administration, the people responsible for this trail of error and/or untruth have been rewarded while those who resisted it or went along unwillingly have been marginalized, punished or fired.
The most profound and fateful decision a President can make is to send our troops to war. The decision must be made based on a clearheaded perception of the threat AND the consequences of acting or not acting. This is the standard by which the Bush Presidency should be judged for its decision to go to war in Iraq. As previously noted , The Minneapolis Star Tribune has made the most insightful analysis to date George W. Bush's performance.
In exchange for our uniformed young people's willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them ...our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary ...In...Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them.
This satire of the media hiding discovery of an OJ tape couldn't be more apt.