Too Little, Too Late

George Tenet's memoir will be available Monday, but The New York Times got an advance copy, and has this report.

George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a "serious debate" about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States....

"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....

Mr. Tenet takes blame for the flawed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s weapons programs, calling the episode "one of the lowest moments of my seven-year tenure." He expresses regret that the document was not more nuanced, but says there was no doubt in his mind at the time that Saddam Hussein possessed unconventional weapons. "In retrospect, we got it wrong partly because the truth was so implausible," he writes.

Not good enough, Mr. Tenet. Not nearly good enough. At any point in the process that took us into this catastrophic war, George Tenet could have said "we can do better." At any point, George Tenet could have acted on his conviction that al Qaeda was a more critical threat to our country than Iraq and fought Cheney and the neocons. Tenet could have stuck his neck out to try to stop this disaster. He should have stuck his neck out to stop this disaster. He feel he has settled a few personal scores with this memoir, but he certainly hasn't redeemed himself for his contribution to the Iraq debacle.