Who’s ‘rewriting history’?

May 4, 2007

Charles Krauthammer, today:

The decision to go to war was made by a war cabinet consisting of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld. No one in that room could even remotely be considered a neoconservative.

Key participants in the Project for the New American Century and their positions in the Bush administration at the start of the war in Iraq:

Richard Cheney, Vice-President

Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense

Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense

Peter Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs

Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State

John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security

Elliot Abrams, Senior Director for Near East, Southwest Asian, and North African Affairs, National Security Council

James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence; member Defense Policy Board

Lewis Libby, Chief of Staff, Office of the Vice-President

Whaddaya say, Charles, are PNAC leaders neocons?

The funny part is, Krauthammer’s column is a lengthy attack on George Tenet, who Krauthammer accuses of trying to “rewrite history.”

George Tenet has a very mixed legacy. On the one hand, he presided over the two biggest intelligence failures of this era — Sept. 11 and the WMD debacle in Iraq. On the other hand, his CIA did devise and carry out brilliantly an astonishingly bold plan to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Tenet might have just left it at that, gone home with his Presidential Medal of Freedom and let history judge him.

Instead, he’s decided to do some judging of his own. In his just-released book, and while hawking it on television, Tenet presents himself as a pathetic victim and scapegoat of an administration that was hellbent on going to war, slam dunk or not.

Tenet writes as if he assumes no one remembers anything…. Everyone has the right to renounce past views. But not to make up that past. It is beyond brazen to think that one can get away with inventing not ancient history but what everyone saw and read with their own eyes just a few years ago.

The irony is rich.

Can someone explain to me how Krauthammer continues to be a columnist for one of the nation’s leading newspapers?

Even his compliment of Tenet is wrong – it was Richard Clarke’ s plan on how to overthrow the Taliban and he came up with it during the Clinton administration.

  • “Can someone explain to me how Krauthammer continues to be a columnist for one of the nation’s leading newspapers?”

    Because his boss believes if he fires Krauthammer, boss will be accused of being prejudiced against handicapped people.

  • Q: Can someone explain to me how Krauthammer continues to be a columnist for one of the nation’s leading newspapers?

    A: Because a) the media is so liberal, or b) because of all the amazingly accurate predictions Krauthammer has made.

    This has been another installment of “Really wrong answers to simple questions”.

    “It is beyond brazen to think that one can get away with inventing… what everyone saw and read with their own eyes just a few years ago.”

    Yes it is. Beyond Chutzpah, you could say.

  • “Tenet writes as if he assumes no one remembers anything….”
    that’s kind of the modus operandi of the entire bush administration, isn’t it? they talk/act like no one remembers all their previous fuck-ups and as if videotape had never been invented.

  • the biggest “intelligence failure” of 9/11 was condi’s failure to listen to tenet’s warnings.

  • “On the one hand, he presided over the two biggest intelligence failures of this era — Sept. 11 and the WMD debacle in Iraq”
    When did just being in office turn into “presiding over” as if Tenet was controlling the situation. Krauthammer is just upset because Tennet has a book out that’s making him millions. We all know what Tennet has done and is doing but the war cabinet not being neocons is absurd. This guy needs to go back and read his articles to be reminded that he is almost always wrong about everything. What an ego not to be embarrassed or shamed into retirement but to go on humiliating himself with more hypocrisy. Cheney not a neocon … even remotely…hahahahahahaha.

  • Biggest intelligence failure is the administration (Bush, Condi, Dick)’s failure to look beyond their obsession with Iraq and see the present danger presented by al Qaeda.

    That negligence should be an impeachable offense in the first place, but of course we wanted heroes in the days after 9/11.

  • “Can someone explain to me how Krauthammer continues to be a columnist for one of the nation’s leading newspapers?”

    Because he is an intellectual whore, and the GOP establishment love him for it.

  • Well, if the WaPo continues to keep employed hacks like krauthammer, seeing its circulation just continues to drop, the market may just take care of krauthammers’ status as a columnist for one of the nation’s leading newspapers.

  • Might as well ask why CNN keeps hiring FOX News people instead of real journalists.

  • Was it David Brooks who joked that “neoconservative” is code for “Jewish conservative”?

    Maybe that’s the sense Krauthammer was going for.

  • Even if the bad intelligence falls squarely on George Tenet’s shoulders (which it doesn’t), was it he who screwed up the war plan?

    Was it he who decided to send too few troops in 2003?

    Or trusted Chalabi to run the country?

    Or fire the entire Iraqi Army?

    Or hand out over-bloated contracts like candy to Halliburton, KBR, and Blackwater?

    Or have a part in the numerous other failures that have happened since the invasion started?

    Tenet may have had a role in the fucked up intel on Iraq, but it was the Bush administration that fucked up the whole war.

  • Can someone explain to me how Krauthammer continues to be a columnist for one of the nation’s leading newspapers?

    I’m not 100% sure, but I’m fairly confident that ChapStick and knee pads are involved.

    Seriously — if I was as wrong in my job as often as Krauthamsammich is in his, I’d have been fired a long, long time ago.

  • I agree with Liam J, who wrote upstream at #8, Krauthammer is an intellectual whore. This whole column is a part of the, “He said,’She said’, Game”, employed by those on the inside of the tent, pissing out, to sell Tenet’s new book. One more squeaking moment of the Right Wing Noise Machine’s slow progress toward the western horizon and the end of the current, glorious, era into a horrible Tomorrow where the,’Fix’, isn’t in.

    After Ragnarok and the Dirty Fucking Hippies get in, (And all charlie’s friends get thrown out. ),then the fun and games will be over and done with and it’s back to the adversarial, ‘enemy-camp-mentality’, relationship with the White House, The Congress and the Government in general. Currently, all the fucksticks are getting their final licksin while the getting’s good on the Preznitential lollypop before it’s no longer cool to give the Chief Executive a spitshine behind the bleachers after gym class and such behavior becomes verboten again. But by that time, the Washington Times and their Archimandrite, Rev. Moon, will have bought the ‘Com-Post’ and they’ll be a one paper town again. Then Charlie ‘What Neo-Cons?’ Kraphammer will be out with a new book, himself and Tenet can return the favor, (and finally give Krauthammer that reach-around he’s owed), and complain about Charlie’s New Book and how it portrays Tenet so inaccurately as a…

    Does it even matter? No. All that matters is that column inches will be devoted to the, “She said, ‘He said’, Game”, again.

    And they all lived happily after. (In exile.)

  • I suppose this thread is about Krauthammer, but Wednesday night I listened to NPR’s Fresh Air, in which Terry Gross interviewed George Tenet. It was the first time I have heard George Tenet speak and I was left with very negative impressions of the man.
    Terry had obviously prepared for the interview very well … did her homework, had read the book, and had prepared good questions all starting with a quote from the book. Mr. Tenet seemed to answer every single question with the same answer that really amounted to [I’m characterizing … this is not s real quote]: “Look you can’t really draw any conclusions blaming anyone for anything from what I wrote. This is complicated stuff, the intelligence business. We made a couple of mistakes, but by and large we did a good job of our part, which is just to present intelligence and assessments. Policy makers make policy and intelligence people do not. We have to be careful here about what we say. I can’t tell you anything about why the policy makers decided to do what they decided to do. All I can talk about is what we did in the CIA.” And of course he never really said much about what the CIA actually did. This same collection of ideas was the response to EVERY different question that Terry asked. Truly rather strange. the man is totally evasive.
    For what it’s worth… It struck me that he was trying to control the “use” of his book for purposes that he perhaps does not support. But on the other hand, he’s on tour making promotional appearance to sell the book. I was not motivated to go make a purchase.
    Did anyone else hear this interview?

  • “Tenet might have just left it at that, gone home with his Presidential Medal of Freedom and let history judge him.”

    The way Krauthammer and his buddies W and Cheney use that expression of letting history judge them, one gets the impression that these guys know a lot of the true information won’t get out or has been shredded already. I don’t think “history” will be a very kind judge to any of these idiots. And this is the time I really hope there is a God who will judge these bastards even more harshly some day.

  • No one in that room could even remotely be considered a neoconservative.

    They weren’t NeoCons, they were VULCANS!

  • Krauthammer is stillk a columnist because of the money. Simply that. Call the papers where his columns appear and complain if you don’t like him.

    As for Wary Tale, I heard part of another interview and Tenet sounded horrified. Hardly like the head of an important agency, and sounded like he was still trying to straddle the fence of “don’t blame me” and “thanks for the medal.”

    It’s apparent that the politicization of the Justice Department republicans did was also something they did at the CIA. Tenet was a fall guy and they showed their apprecuiation with a now meaningless medal.

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