WHAT’S THERE TO TALK ABOUT?….George Tenet says no one in the White House ever had a serious conversation about whether invading Iraq was a good idea. Dan Bartlett says they had plenty of them. James Fallows isn’t buying:
I say plainly: that is a lie. To be precise about it, no account of the Administration’s deliberations, by anyone other than Bartlett just now, offers even the slightest evidence that this claim is true. Innumerable accounts offer ample evidence that it is false. I have asked this direct question to many interviewees who were in a position to know: was there ever such a meeting or discussion? The answer was always, No. The followup challenge to Bartlett should be: show us a memo, show us a policy paper, show us a scheduled meeting, show us notes taken at the time to substantiate the idea that the Administration ever seriously considered what the nation would gain or lose by invading Iraq, and what the alternatives might be. What the Administration actually considered, according to all known evidence, is how it would invade Iraq, and when.
Goodness. So shrill. Come on, Jim, it was only a trifling little Mideast war. Wouldn’t a “memo,” as you so quaintly call it, have been rather a lot of overkill?
