Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

The Daily Howler has been incomparably complaining for some time that the timeline of this section of Woodward makes no sense anyway, because this meeting is in December, when Bush and Cheney have already spent months making blanket assertions about WMD e.g.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh042104.shtml

Woodward's dialogue sounds about as plausible as that in "DC 911- Time of Crisis".

Personally, I just thought it was funny that Woodward had to explain that Tenet was a basketball fan to account for his use of the cliche "slam dunk" that I have heard from many (including myself) who are not great sports fans.

Just on the face of it, it seems clear enough that Bush was talking about how to present and promote a war which had already been decided on.

The idea that Bush could have been persuaded by what Tenet said makes Bush look like a stoner idiot. It's almost a Cheech and Chong joke. '"Like, wow!, man, that presentation was tha shit!" said Tenet.'

I think that Woodward is playing all sides. To me this passage is pretty damning, but the Bushies think it makes him look good. They smokin some good shit.

"I concur with Hesiod. If Tenet had said what Bush reports that he said, then Tenet would no longer have his job."

Not necessarily true. Complete and utter loyalty seems to be the prime trait of GWB. Moreover, it's been suggested that Tenet [and also Powell] know enough dirt on the administration that having them outside the White House and potentially bitter about it would be much, much worse than any politcal damage caused by standing their ground.

"I concur with Hesiod. If Tenet had said what Bush reports that he said, then Tenet would no longer have his job."

Not necessarily true. Complete and utter loyalty seems to be the prime trait of GWB. Moreover, it's been suggested that Tenet [and also Powell] know enough dirt on the administration that having them outside the White House and potentially bitter about it would be much, much worse than any politcal damage caused by standing their ground.

Just wanted to point out that an Illinois college student has just put out a study tracking the 27 (!) different rationales used to justify the war in Iraq in the two years leading up to the invasion:

http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/04/0510war.html

I just started reading Woodward's book. One of the most intriguing nuggets I came across was that the job that Rumsfeld originally wanted was director of the CIA. He sought the CIA as more in need of fixing. He was talked out it by his friend, Ken "Cakewalk" Adelman. Adelman said that the head of the CIA is not suppossed to recommned policy and that did fit Rumsfeld's personality and Rumsfeld agreed.

That brings up two things to think aobut:
Adelman used to be Rumsfeld's aide, so when he was saying that invading Iraq would be a cakewalk, was he saying this talking point on behalf of Rumsfeld?
What would Rumsfeld been like as the director of the CIA? Would he still have focused so much on Iraq? Would he have seen how much of a threat Al-Qaeda was? Would Rumsfeld have been an ally of Richard Clarke?

Nice post Brad, particularly the point that "posession of WMD" and "threat to the US" are not synonymous. But even you (and Hesiod) fall for a part of the administration's disinformation campaign. The very use of the term "weapons of mass destruction" shifts the argument significantly in their direction. You have to give these guys credit, they're experts at framing an argument on their own terms.

I'm not sure when the phrase WMD was coined, but it's fairly recent, and the aggregation of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons under one acronym significantly distorted the policy arguments about Iraq. In most cases there is only one true "weapon of mass destruction" and that is a nuclear bomb. Relatively portable, such a device could be smuggled into the country by a small team. If detonated in a compact city center it would generate casualties into six figures.

Biological and chemical weapons (which before this administration were commonly referred to as "nonconventional weapons") are certainly nasty things, and because of their indiscriminate nature evoke a good deal of terror in the general population. But they are not weapons of mass destruction (in the sense of causing enormous numbers of casualties) unless you have sophisticated delivery systems for them. In fact, the necessary delivery systems are so sophisticated that only a few countries in the world (the US, Britain, Israel, possibly France, Russia, India and Pakistan) have them.

Bush and others in the administration still seem hopeful that they'll find a barrel or two of Ricin in a garbage dump in Tikrit, and that will validate their "weapons of mass destruction" claims. But Iraq did not have, was not even close to having, "WMD" in any real sense, and this was obvious well before the war began.

You have to wonder if this abuse of language was purely cynical on the part of the administration, manipulating public perceptions to their own ends, or if they bought into their own sloppy thinking and actually convinced themselves Saddam was a valid threat. Either way, we are ruled by fools.

It seems like Woodward was fed this so that it would suggest that Tenet, rather than the Admin, was at fault - except it's pretty clear from this passage alone that even if Tenet gave them that kind of assurance, it was because they wanted it. The whole conversation is taking place is a framework of "We want to go to war, now let's find some good reasons why."

--I can see how people might conclude that Saddam Hussein had effective weapons of mass destruction programs. I cannot see how people could conclude that he was a threat to the United States of America.--

Kind of. The fear was that Saddam is not a rational actor, and basically can't be trusted to behave himself. I never bought that he would be a direct threat to the United States, but he wasn't a threat to the United States when he invaded Kuwait, either. I don't think North Korea will ever attack us, but I don't want it to have nuclear weapons (not that I'm saying we should attack North Korea).

The book quotes the chimp and not ONE Bushism.

Ergo: the dialogue is fake.

Also, no Gameboy on Bush's desk.

Maybe Hussein was considered a threat to the US because he was willing to sell or donate his WMD to al Quada??????

We don't need to speculate much on what Rummy would have been like as the DCI. An equally arrogant man--John Deutch--was DCI a few years back, and it was a semi-disaster.

"Cheney could think of no reason to question Tenet's assertion. He was, after all, the head of the CIA and would know the most"

This is the same Cheney who set up his own intelligence "stovepipe" to bypass the more cautious CIA? Sure.

"...Failure to distinguish..."?

See Earl Shorris' piece, "Ignoble Liars: Leo Strauss, George Bush, and the philosophy of mass deception" in the latest Harpers.

"...Such deformations of the English language are no accident: they reflect the administration's general pattern of communication..."

"A government would collapse if it spoke nothing but nonsense. Under George W. Bush the government has learned to speak on two levels at the same time. What appears to be nonsense to most people makes perfect sense to those who are initiated into a way of thinking and a certain set of references, many of them biblical..."

"One of the great services that Strauss and his disciples have performed for the Bush regime has been the provision of a philosphy of the noble lie, the conviction that lies, far from being simply a regrettable necessity of political life, are instead virtuous and noble instruments of wise policy..."

Etc. etc.

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