Showing posts with label George Tenet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Tenet. Show all posts
Monday, April 30, 2007
America: Ex-CIA Officials Speak Out over George Tenet's New Book, and THEY ARE FURIOUS.
Was it Charles Barkley who said of his autobiography when questioned about a typically outrageous quote, I don't know, I haven't read the book?
Read this. It's an open letter from ex-CIA officials taking George Tenet to task for betraying CIA officers and analysts and failing to meet his obligations to the people of the United States and urging him "to return the Medal of Freedom you received from President George Bush [I didn't say that, they did] and "dedicate a significant percentage of the royalties from your book to the U.S. soldiers and their families who have been killed and wounded in Iraq." (But not to Iraqis... I know, it's none of my business)
People seem to be uniformly furious about this. A friend of mine who works in Washington brought it up the other day unbidden, told me he'd never been so angry like this before, and wanted to know what I thought. To save time, I asked him to read my blog.
Harder to fathom, though, is why George Tenet decided to do this in the first place. This is not an O.J. Simpson, or an Apprentice flameout we are talking about here. Is destroying your reputation and cutting your ties to your former colleagues and everybody else that you want to have come to your funeral worth the million dollars, give or take a few (million)? Is he going through a rough divorce? Did he borrow money and put it all on Enron?
And if he blames in on his book agent, tell him there's a couple of bridges in Nigeria I'd like to sell him.
For those of you who get your news exclusively from this blog, I lifted it off this CNN post.
Read this. It's an open letter from ex-CIA officials taking George Tenet to task for betraying CIA officers and analysts and failing to meet his obligations to the people of the United States and urging him "to return the Medal of Freedom you received from President George Bush [I didn't say that, they did] and "dedicate a significant percentage of the royalties from your book to the U.S. soldiers and their families who have been killed and wounded in Iraq." (But not to Iraqis... I know, it's none of my business)
People seem to be uniformly furious about this. A friend of mine who works in Washington brought it up the other day unbidden, told me he'd never been so angry like this before, and wanted to know what I thought. To save time, I asked him to read my blog.
Harder to fathom, though, is why George Tenet decided to do this in the first place. This is not an O.J. Simpson, or an Apprentice flameout we are talking about here. Is destroying your reputation and cutting your ties to your former colleagues and everybody else that you want to have come to your funeral worth the million dollars, give or take a few (million)? Is he going through a rough divorce? Did he borrow money and put it all on Enron?
And if he blames in on his book agent, tell him there's a couple of bridges in Nigeria I'd like to sell him.
For those of you who get your news exclusively from this blog, I lifted it off this CNN post.
Friday, April 27, 2007
America: I Can Feel Tony Allen Can Feel Mr. Tenet's Pain
Sorry to be in the mood for trivia…
If you think slamdunks can be detrimental to your career, just ask Tony Allen of the Boston Celtics. According to Mark Murphy of the Boston Globe, "[a]fter scoring a career-high 30 points against Denver on Dec. 15, he averaged 21 points on 55.7 percent shooting and 5.5 rebounds during a seven-game stretch from Dec. 29 through Jan. 10. The latter date is infamous. That's when Allen attempted a gratuitous dunk after the whistle and tore the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his left knee." This is the second serious knee injury in his career, and no one knows if he will ever regain the explosive athleticism with which he had earned a place in the Celtics starting line-up. If he doesn't, he will be just another earthbound, undersized, under-experienced shooting guard, the last thing the Celtics, or, for that matter, the NBA, need. His career is very much up in the air as he endures a long rehab.
But Mr. Allen has it easy compared to George Tenet. You see, Mr. Tenet, if you will believe him (and I see no reason not to do so), has already seen his entire career go down the drain, all because of a silly slamdunk. And it only happened because that vice president of the errant shooting eye mangled his metaphor (IT WASN’T EVEN A REAL DUNK!) beyond all recognition. Oh, I can just imagine Mr. Tenet protesting, to no avail, with Mssrs. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Mme. Rice, indeed anyone who would listen, including the president himself, that his remarks were being misused in the prosecution of a policy with which he vehemently disagreed. And because of this, five years later, he finds himself unemployable. No wonder he feels compelled to resort to this confessional, to launch a career as a vice-president critic. I cannot wait for the book.
Yes, I feel for Mr. Tenet. I feel for him so much, that I will not begrudge his keeping that Presidential Medal of Freedom that was so graciously draped around his neck by the president himself. After all, if Mr. Allen is going to get to keep his $1.87 million for 2007-2008 whether or not he ever plays another game in the NBA (even though he has no one but himself to blame for his latest misfortune), then surely Mr. Tenet should be allowed to hold on to a mere tin-star keepsake from his glory days in the White House.
And thank you, Stephen G. Esq., for lending me Bambi vs. Godzilla by David Mamet. I can actually hear faint echoes of Mr. Mamet's voice and even politics (Mr. Shallow, that's my name) in this admittedly aeasthetically inferior piece of scribbling, I do.
If you think slamdunks can be detrimental to your career, just ask Tony Allen of the Boston Celtics. According to Mark Murphy of the Boston Globe, "[a]fter scoring a career-high 30 points against Denver on Dec. 15, he averaged 21 points on 55.7 percent shooting and 5.5 rebounds during a seven-game stretch from Dec. 29 through Jan. 10. The latter date is infamous. That's when Allen attempted a gratuitous dunk after the whistle and tore the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his left knee." This is the second serious knee injury in his career, and no one knows if he will ever regain the explosive athleticism with which he had earned a place in the Celtics starting line-up. If he doesn't, he will be just another earthbound, undersized, under-experienced shooting guard, the last thing the Celtics, or, for that matter, the NBA, need. His career is very much up in the air as he endures a long rehab.
But Mr. Allen has it easy compared to George Tenet. You see, Mr. Tenet, if you will believe him (and I see no reason not to do so), has already seen his entire career go down the drain, all because of a silly slamdunk. And it only happened because that vice president of the errant shooting eye mangled his metaphor (IT WASN’T EVEN A REAL DUNK!) beyond all recognition. Oh, I can just imagine Mr. Tenet protesting, to no avail, with Mssrs. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Mme. Rice, indeed anyone who would listen, including the president himself, that his remarks were being misused in the prosecution of a policy with which he vehemently disagreed. And because of this, five years later, he finds himself unemployable. No wonder he feels compelled to resort to this confessional, to launch a career as a vice-president critic. I cannot wait for the book.
Yes, I feel for Mr. Tenet. I feel for him so much, that I will not begrudge his keeping that Presidential Medal of Freedom that was so graciously draped around his neck by the president himself. After all, if Mr. Allen is going to get to keep his $1.87 million for 2007-2008 whether or not he ever plays another game in the NBA (even though he has no one but himself to blame for his latest misfortune), then surely Mr. Tenet should be allowed to hold on to a mere tin-star keepsake from his glory days in the White House.
And thank you, Stephen G. Esq., for lending me Bambi vs. Godzilla by David Mamet. I can actually hear faint echoes of Mr. Mamet's voice and even politics (Mr. Shallow, that's my name) in this admittedly aeasthetically inferior piece of scribbling, I do.
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