Slash and Burn
Jack at Ruminate This posted a preview of coming attractions: Letting the Big Fish Off the Hook.
Gary Bernsten is a retired CIA agent who was in charge of the effort to capture Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. He has written a book, Jawbreaker about the effort and is now suing to get the CIA to complete its review of the book so it can be published.
Apparently Gary missed the problems that Richard Clarke had getting his book, Against All Enemies, cleared for publication. Like Clarke, Bernsten is not going to praise the Shrubbery, so, unlike Tommy Franks or Bob Woodward, the CIA has already taken more than twice as long as Agency rules require to clear the book.
Obviously they need extra time for the meetings to create the talking points to be used for responding to another negative book by an insider about the incompetence of the Shrubbery and his minions.
The people at the top get medals and promotions while the people at the bottom get indicted. The intelligence gathered by the CIA was good and sufficient for the proper decisions to be made. We knew who was responsible for the September 11th attacks, we knew where they were, and we had them cornered, but the mission was compromised to prepare for attacking Iraq.
The intelligence community had plenty of skepticism about the WMD claims, but it was ignored and marginalized by political appointees. George Tenet claimed responsibility for the yellowcake in the State of the Union, in spite of the facts, to get his medal and a pat on the head.
By this time everyone should know that they cooked the books. The intelligence that was claimed as justifying the war was hand selected – the fix was in.
