The Daily Background
| Regardless of his new book, George Tenet is still the same man who authorized torture
by Arlen Parsa
I’m not singling anyone in particular out, but these days, a lot of people in the blogosphere seem eager to boost George Tenet, the former CIA director whose new book “At the Center of the Storm” is critical of the Bush Administration’s use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq.
And the media is happy to boost him, at least while he’s giving them interviews where he gets all agitated in a totally-fake manner because it looks raw and real, but in reality he’s just trying to stir up book sales.
At the same time, the blogosphere shouldn’t keep ignoring the fact that he is, at heart, just another one of these guys that we’re fighting against. He’s pro-Iraq war, he thinks we should be in Iraq regardless of whether or not it had weapons of mass destruction or not. He still says “9/11 changed everything” and he tows the Administration’s line on just about everything else too.
He’s still virulently pro-torture and politically aligned with the Administration almost entirely.
He still politically agrees with the Administration, but feels betrayed they used him. His only beef? He was a loyal footsoldier and they through him overboard for political purposes. Tenet tells CBS’ Scott Pelley on Sunday that “[Throwing me overboard was] the most despicable thing that ever happened to me… You don’t do this. You don’t throw somebody overboard just because it’s a deflection. Is that honorable? It’s not honorable to me.”
The only reason, I think, that he’s written this book and is going around doing these interviews with 60 Minutes and others, is because he sees an opportunity, now that the President is unpopular, to try and salvage his reputation by riding the coattails of high disapproval ratings. “At the end of the day, the only thing you have… is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor and when you don’t have that anymore, well, there you go,” Tenet will say on CBS’ 60 Minutes Sunday.
He sees this as a way to try and save himself in history’s eyes. Oh, and I’m sure profit motive enters into it as well.
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