Who Was Running The Show?

An excerpt of George Tenet's new book is out in Time. Unsurprisingly, it paints Tenet and the CIA in a relatively favorable light.

Perhaps more surprisingly, George Bush doesn't come off as badly as I expected. The biggest villains of the piece are Cheney, Rumsfeld, and his inepticons from hell - Wolfowitz and Feith. While Cheney, Feith and probably Wolfowitz scheme relentlessly on behalf of Chalabi, Rumsfeld seems out of touch and clueless. The President's instincts (in Tenet's telling) are not too bad, but for some reason he can't bring himself to fire Rumsfeld and company or consign Cheney to an undisclosed location.

Bush, in this version, seems weak and distractable rather than clueless. I wouldn't be surprised if the evil poison of Rove played a role here too.

One thing that's clear is that Bush, the CEO president, had no clue as to how to run a Rotary Club.

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