George Tenet Quotes
In the intelligence business you are almost never completely wrong or completely right.
George Tenet, Director, Central Intelligence Agency, Speech, Georgetown University, February 6, 2004
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
She was explaining why she supported the Iraq War which the George W. Bush administration started claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. After invading Iraq, it turned out that the “intelligence” was wrong—there were no WMDs. Many believe that the intelligence was fabricated to justify a war that Bush, Vice President Cheney and the neo-conservatives wanted for other reasons.
There is a great tendency in politics and government operations to get extremely precise numbers because political opponents will always attack all numbers that do not support their positions. The result is that typically, so much time and money goes into trying to get precision, that by the time the numbers are good enough the opportunity to make the right policy decision will have passed. Much information that bears on an issue is never used because it is not precise enough while the precise information is not particularly relevant. See {619763} for a similar related quote.
The Central Intelligence Agency had a hand in the assassination having smuggled in the weapons. However, the government takeover plan did not go as expected and there was no clear alternative plan to go to.
His catastrophic failure however was when he supported the Neocon ideology that Iraq had a nuclear bomb about to be deployed and urged a preventative war invading Iraq. Not only was there no bomb ready for deployment, there was net even a nuclear research or development program to do anything nuclear.
George John Tenet is a former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.
