President Bush's Major Mistake as Aired on 60 Minutes

Lee Ellis

George W. Bush has made many wise decisions, even if the Soros MOVE-ON.org and The New York Times syndrome always prevail with propaganda to make it sound otherwise. But President Bush has made a major mistake that many of us across the USA have also made and regretted during our lifetimes. We have refused to get rid of bad tenants!

George W. did this with his Tenet ---Clinton's Director of the CIA, George Tenet. When Bush cleaned house in 2001, he left Tenet in place and relied on him for Intelligence information even though Clinton had always missed on stopping Osama bin Laden based on CIA information. But then Clinton (and Carter before him) had destroyed the CIA's ability to get vital information by denying it human resources overseas and relying, instead, on analysts at Langley ----the "Valerie Plames"--- who worked from their desks trying to make judgments on what might happen.

I suspect that what you saw on "60 Minutes" about Tenet's book which hits the retail stores today, had more to do with selling books than about what ever happened in Washington! In all the years I have seen appearances by Tenet on TV, this is the first time I have seen him show this much acted-out passion. I am sure his passionate body language was genuine, but more on selling his book than in defending his words "Slam-Dunk ."

As my readers know, I yell at my TV a lot. As I watched "60 Minutes," I was doing this again!

When Pelley and Tenet said that Iraq had no WMDs: I asked "Who did they think killed all the Kurds with a WMD of poison gas?" They had photos of all the dead bodies. What more proof did they need? Our troops were sent there armed with masks and protective clothing ready to deal with this deadly poison.

Tenet blamed Dr. Rice, but when he supposedly told her about a terror plot, but NEVER mentioned it to the President when he had a daily meeting with him, wouldn't this cause any new advisor to be slow in going full blast on something from a former Clinton bureau chief? She did follow through with a team sent to Afghanistan to get some human intelligence on the Taliban. Remember that this entire Bush administration had been in the White House only for a few months in 2001. Bush was also delayed by the Gore flap in getting an early start in building an administration. No matter whether it is an incoming Democrat or Republican President, it takes a long time for a new government to get up to speed due to our existing bureaucratic form of government. This has happened with every major political change in the past.

Did Tenet and Pelley forget that Bush promised to go after the terrorists AND those nations supporting them? WMDs were only a small part of the reasons for going into Iraq. We knew and had proof that Saddam was fueling and financing terrorism! We knew that al Qaeda leaders had been flying in and out of Iraq. We knew Saddam had been paying $25,000 dollars to the families of any volunteer suicide killers! We knew that Saddam did have a nuclear plant that was destroyed by Israel and that he would try to do this again. And we knew that he had rape and torture rooms that he used on innocent Iraqi civilians and political prisoners.
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We also had intelligence about Saddam's nuclear attempts coming in from British, French, Spanish and German Intelligence as well. Any President who ignored this information and did nothing would do so at his peril!

More importantly, we knew that al Qaeda was not a nation, but was made up of Islamic fanatics who came from all the Middle East nations. One could not act as if this were one uniformed, national area occupying just one piece of land. It was a terrorist group and it was kept alive by donations from various other nations, especially Iraq!

With the Carter and Clinton administrations decimating our human intel in the Middle East, we had to have a listening post right there in the heart of the Middle East. Where did Tenet think it should have been --- Iran, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia? How could we get into any of those places without a tremendous high cost of lives and money? Iraq was the only place possible and it was a SLAM DUNK as Tenet promised. Our troops swept through Iraq into Baghdad as Saddam fled like a coward to be found later hiding in a spider hole in the earth! The taking of Iraq and driving out its cruel despot who had enslaved and murdered so many innocent civilians was a mission accomplished quickly. We saw the 8 million people who voted and held up their purple stained fingers

Unfortunately, other Middle East nations, especially Iran, hired mercenaries to try to keep the Iraq government from succeeding in forming a democracy because its dictators knew that this taste of freedom would spread and perhaps rob them of their corrupt power with it financial gains. We do not have a civil war there; we simply a Middle East power grab taking place!

More importantly, we have the largest listening post ever built housed in our new large embassy. It is due to this oasis in the heart of the Middle East, that President Bush has kept America from being attacked again and again by terrorism. Those of us who give Bush low poll ratings have obviously either forgotten all of this or we are either misinformed or uninformed. To be misinformed gives credit to the enemy who feeds us propaganda; to be uninformed, there is no one to blame but ourselves.

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Lee Ellis is a retired journalist and narrator, formerly with both CBS and Gannett (USA Weekend). He was also a combat veteran of WWII, having fought in the South Pacific invasions. He had the pleasure of interviewing Ronald Reagan as an actor and then later working to help him become Governor of California. At the age of 80, he is keeping busy writing and doing free lance narrations for radio and television. He is an active member of Rotary and the VFW.

indiolee@dc.rr.com