Word: tenet
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...awkward moment in a suddenly wobbly presidency. Obviously, Iraq was a war of choice. CIA Director George Tenet recently said he never believed there was an "imminent" threat. It is hard to find anyone outside the Vice President's circle of friends who still insists that an immediate, unilateral invasion was necessary. The real question for this election year is, Was going to war in Iraq the right choice in the larger struggle against radical Islam? Saddam Hussein is in jail. There may have been ancillary benefits from the American show of force: Libya has given up its nuclear ambitions...
...Chief George Tenet was certain David Kay was the best bloodhound to set loose in Iraq last summer to sniff for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Tenet reasoned that if anyone could find the stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological arms on which the Bush Administration had predicated its unprecedented, pre-emptive attack on Saddam Hussein's regime, it was Kay. The Texan had spent 20 years as an international weapons inspector, with several tours in Iraq. Hard-nosed and fiercely independent, Kay, 63, had a vast network of friends at the Pentagon and the CIA--and among Iraqis...
...that cost hundreds of American lives and billions of dollars and alienated many allies. They sparked a new round of finger pointing between the CIA and the White House about who ginned up the weapons that apparently never existed--and why. They put new pressure on Tenet, who has survived in his post longer than many might have imagined and may no longer be able to write his own exit lines. And they revived plans, long abandoned, of a badly needed reform of the nation's numerous, mysterious, overlapping and often quarrelsome intelligence agencies. Bush had shelved the idea...
...might go along with a blue-ribbon panel, though the President wants to let the Iraq Survey Group continue its work. With Kay having resigned his post, the group is now under the leadership of Charles Duelfer, another veteran arms inspector. Bush, the official said, continues to stand by Tenet, in part because foreign intelligence agencies also missed the WMD. Besides, the source added, Bush is "very willing to go out and discuss why [war] was the right thing to do. He is as sure of this as he is of anything...
KAYBOOM Bush's former top WMD inspector finds no unconventional arms in Iraq and admits "we were almost all wrong." The President and CIA Director Tenet are feeling the pressure...