Yeah, that was all kinds of stupid. Like a layered cake of stupid. That was the baskin Robbins of stupid. 31 flavors of bang-your-head-against-the-wall-ness.

That was the stupid equivalent of getting hit in the face with a stinky mackerel (which, now that I think about it, is stupid both literally and symbolically.)

But what do you expect from George fucking Tenet?

I'll start:

One major conclusion of the Jeremiah report was that both the US intelligence and policy communities had an underlying mind-set that Indian government officials would behave as ours behaved. We did not sufficiently accept that Indian politicians might do what they had openly promised

Somehow I don't think he meant that the way it sounds. Although that would make more sense than claiming the U.S. would never perform a nuclear test.

So rather than collecting intelligence, the CIA first assumes that all cultures are exactly like us, and then we guess what they are going to do based on a faecile psychological analysis predicated on the assumption that they also lie just like us. I thought the CIA was generally evil but somewhat competent in the execution of that evil nature, but it seems to be that the are both completely incompetent and full of nefarious motives. Not to mention the admission that it is simply standard procedure for our own government to lie about literally everything, and it is the public's responsibility to assume this and interpret the world through this assumption. The more I think about everything he just said, the stupider it gets. It's not even internally consistent in its stupidity, it's a contradictory and almost mind-numbing idiocy.

I was instantly reminded of one your earlier posts where the quote you gave from Tenet said this: “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Never was there such a pregnant opening as that and surely the universe would have ended its expansion and probably be well into its collapse before you could explain to Tenet what he did not know.

The possibilities are endless and there is not enough time in the universe to complete such a task.

are you sure this book was not written by jack handey?

It's Mother's Day, so someone has to say it: Jon, stop reading that book or your head will explode. Also, don't run with scissors.

Eat your vegetables!

We thought it implausible that someone like Saddam would risk the destruction of his regime over noncompliance with UN resolutions.

So maybe that's why Saddam actually did comply with those UN resolutions? By, you know, actually destroying all his WMD? And then inviting UN inspectors into Iraq, so they could go all over the country and determine that those WMD had been destroyed?

What we did not account for was the mind-set never to show weakness in a very dangerous neighborhood...

Right, that's why Saddam kept loudly proclaiming that he had WMD when he really did not.

Oh, wait...

Are our rulers stupid, or evil? It's clear the answer is - both.

amazing how that fiction that Saddam claimed he had WMDs still hangs around - Saddam went on live TV and claimed he did not on 2/4/03 in Britain, and yet that still won't go away.

also amazing the fiction that Saddam did not comply with UN resolutions, when it was clearly proven that he did.

HELLO wall, I didn't see you standing there. Did I hurt ya? Boy, I sure did hit you square.

Um, how is "throwing inspectors out of the country" and "refusing inspections of 80+ sites" equivalent to "clearly compying with UN resolutions"?

Ignoring that... maybe Tenet's little burst of insight that sometimes people mean what they say should affect his impression of Iran's pres saying he will nuke Isreal and the US. Nah, I'm sure he's just making speeches to rally his voters. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Um, how is "throwing inspectors out of the country" and "refusing inspections of 80+ sites" equivalent to "clearly compying with UN resolutions"?

Ignoring that... maybe Tenet's little burst of insight that sometimes people mean what they say should affect his impression of Iran's pres saying he will nuke Isreal and the US.

I'd thought the whole WMD thing would make Americans more skeptical of the concocted storylines their overseers feed them. But that doesn't appear to be happening.

No wonder so many mental institutions are empty! They're all working at the CIA.

Oi-vey. Well, you know what P.T. Barnum said: There's a lizard-brained FAS baby with far too much credulity hatched every minute...twice a minute in Red States. Or something like that.

Now Jon, I've posted here way too many times for you to pin that one on Tenet.