Tenet Tea Leaves

The extent to which Tenet was pushed out by the White House is not entirely clear. However, the dominant spin in the press is already apparent, and it bodes ill for the nation.

Tenet and the CIA could fairly be faulted for its pre-9/11 errors and omissions. Tenet could certainly be faulted for not having been more forceful in his attempts to tether the Deserter's more exuberant WMD fantasies. It is of course possible to criticize Tenet for his careless "slam dunk" assessment of the likelihood of Iraqi WMD caches. But it is quite simply insane to focus on the alleged WMD failure at CIA when the true failures - the unquestioning and tragic reliance on inherently incredible INC sources - are attributable to Feith's operation at the Pentagon. Christ, the CIA consistently informed Bush and Cheney of the absence of hard evidence of Iraqi WMDs and was crucified for it by Feith's Office of Special Plans! And yet the media, slack-jawed and sheeplike, are echoing the administration spin that the WMD failures are properly laid at the feet of the CIA.

This is a clear indication of a massive neocon victory in the administration. The real reason for Tenet's ouster isn't yet clear - it may ultimately relate to the CIAs offensive against Chalabi - but the fact that the spin places the WMD intelligence failures at the CIA, thereby implicitly absolving the neocons who promoted the Chalabi WMD fraud, makes it clear that the neocons still call the shots in the Deserter's administration.

Tenet is gone, only days after crossing Chalabi. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith remain at the Pentagon. This is very bad news.