Only Tenet Takes Responsibility
As the storm over the President's "mis-statements" in the State of the Union continues to blow through
Washington, there is one thing that is clear -- CIA Director George Tenet is the only honest man dealing
with foreign policy in the Bush Administration. Unlike Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and
National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, Mr. Tenet has taken responsibility for what some claim was a
factual error regarding an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Niger that appeared in the State of the Union
speech.
The sixteen words that have the parsers in Washington in a dither are "The British government has
learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In Whitehall
and the House of Commons, the truth of this statement may matter. Along Pennsylvania Avenue, it is a
sign of silliness that the issue even came up -- why didn't the CIA, NSA, DIA, etc. learn this? Because it
turned out not to be true or because America's sources didn't know? An editor worth half the salary a
G-12 civil servant makes would not have let that sentence pass as it stood. An American president
demanding war on the strength of findings by foreign intelligence services is just too weak. Make the
point with American sources or don't bring the issue up.
It now seems Mr. Tenet never read the final draft of the speech. A dereliction of duty to be sure. If Ms.
Rice and Mr. Rumsfeld failed to read it, shame on them. If they did read it, why did their intelligence staffs
let that obnoxious sentence remain? In either case, neither has taken responsibility for the failure (if this
tempest in a teapot counts as such).
Of course, American politicians are not in the habit of resigning for failures; staff members do that, a
reverse from British practice. Mr. Tenet, one of the few Democrats on the Bush team, is a perfect sacrifice
here, and Ms. Rice and Mr. Rumsfeld are let off the hook if he goes. It is an unseemly business, but it has
been a long time since Mr. Truman put up the sign in the Oval Office that read "The Buck Stops Here."
These days, if the buck did stop, Mr. Bush would have to take responsibility for the fact that 3,000 people
died on September 11, 2001 on his watch.