Oh man, that hurts.

I read this yesterday in the Post. I think the players in this administration are essentially feckless, including Tenet. However Scheuer presents himself as a little too wise with hindsight. ( If only the entire planet had listened to brilliant and incisive me! ) He s obviously angling himself for his 15 minutes of fame on TV talk shows as a counter and critic to Tenet s book when it s released. And now with us to discuss the Tenet book And then a continuing fat and happy role waxing portentous as a talking head on cable.

Elizabeth, why don't you go elsewhere instead of attempting to affect what people are allowed to write and read?

Kevin, All post-mortems on Iraq are going to be self-serving, but Tenet's was a particularly egregious example of the genre.
It is totally unfair to equate Scheuer's pre-war responsibilities with those of Tenet (his boss). Scheuer's job was to raise issues with Tenet; he did not have access to the White House. It was Tenet's job to raise those issues with the White House, Pentagon, and the rest of the intelligence community.

That's only a "money quote" (yet another veiled obscenity) if Clinton's pacifism was in any way related to cowardice. It takes great bravery to be a pacifist. Just ask Jesus.

Mar lup, Because Rod shares my concerns about public standards of decency and thus I assumed it was an oversight on his part. I would not have made such a request on most blogs, as most modern people reject these standards. Rod wrote about his increasing sensitivity to the coarseness of modern culture recently, here: http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/crunchycon/2006/10/match-point.html It's entirely up to Rod whether he wants to go on using this phrase, but having been through a similar process of sensitization to coarseness as he has, I know it doesn't happen all at once. I thought this might be an old habit he hadn't given any thought to. I am merely making a polite request that Rod - and you - are free to ignore. I would *never* attempt to prevent people from being *allowed* to read and write obscenities on their own blogs. The specific phrase I am objecting to is "ripped him a new one," which is clearly derived from "ripped him a new a******." The original is not only obscene, it's very violent, and removing the word "a******" doesn't really change the meaning.

Scheuer accuses others of moral cowardice for not raising objections. Regardless of Scheurer's job description, he could have fallen on his sword and gone public with his accusations much earlier than he did... Scheuer did raise a public objection before the war began. He did it on an ABC news show dedicated to his book. Yes, he had to do so under anonymity, but that's because he was ordered to do so by the government, who wanted to keep his name secret for some reason. My understanding is that this would have applied even if he'd quit.

forestwalker has a good point. Scheuer should have been a bit more careful with his labels.

Scheuer makes a point that deserves repeating: Tenet (and Colin Powell) could have prevented the Bush administration from misleading us into a disastrous war in Iraq if they had had the courage to resign rather than allowing themselves (and the public) to be manipulated by misinformation. It's much like what happened in Nixon's administration, when Nixon attempted to eliminate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was demanding the truth, and more than one principled Republican resigned rather go along with this wrong action.

yeah.

His book was not published until June 2004. His first book came out in 2002. The 3-part test for current employees of the CIA, pursuant to which the anonymity condition was imposed (highly unusual, said CIA sources at the time) would not have applied to him if he quit, which he did in 2004. Okay, but exactly what would've changed had he resigned? Even under his own name, I doubt it would have had any impact. So why throw away his pension? As it is, he was taking a big risk publicly criticizing the administration, who could have jimmied up a reason to fire him, which they eventually did. Now let's compare him to Tenet, who surely would have been taken care of had he resigned. His speaking fees alone would have kept him in clover. Yet Tenet didn't resign. Not only that, he stuck with the President for two more years, and then accepted a Medal of Freedom for his work. The worst you can say about Scheuer is that he was afraid of losing his pension, no small thing. But Tenet, Tenet sold his soul for a trinket.

Derek, the book in question was Imperial Hubris. That was the book that raised the issue concerning Iraq, and you simply made a mistake about it being published before the war. As to Scheuer being fired, Scheuer publicly stated on November 12, 2004 when he announced his resignation: "My decision is entirely my own. I have been in no way forced to this decision by the CIA. ... I have concluded that there has not been adequate national debate over the nature of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and the forces he leads and inspires, and the nature and dimensions of intelligence reform needed to address that threat. It is my intention to articulate a series of views in the hope of producing a more substantive debate than what has heretofore occurred." Therefore, your statement that the administration "jimmied up" a reason to fire him contradicts Scheurer's. You doubt that his resignation would have had any impact. I disagree. Of course, we'll never know because he didn't.