July 23, 2003

The Blame Game

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- It didn’t work when the Bush administration tried to pin bad intelligence on Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet. And getting deputy national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley and Bush communications director Dan Barlett to fall on the 16-word, African uranium sword isn’t going to work, either.

Curiously, just after the DCI said that he’d sent memos to the White House warning of the faulty information, they surfaced. In two memos dated October 5th and 6th, the CIA made clear its position against Iraq’s alleged attempt to get uranium from a source in Niger.

The White House had to simultaneously backpedal on its assertion that the CIA objected only to parts of the intelligence gathered by what the president called “British” assets, and announce that CIA disagreed with the entire estimate. It’s a new twist in figuring out where the buck stops on this issue. One thing is for sure: memos from the DCI’s office absolve him or the Agency. Finger pointing becomes rather difficult when the proof is in black and white.

It’s the administration’s fierce attempt to un-ring a bell that the president bonged this January during the now-infamous State of the Union address. What President Bush doesn’t get is that regardless of who put it in the speech, or who left it in the speech, or who objected to its presence in the speech, it’s still his speech. He said the words. Not Bartlett, not Hadley nor speechwriter Michael Gerson.

But the newest attempted career suicide came on such a big news day that it didn’t even make the front page of The New York Times’ website. Perhaps the White House hoped that Pfc. Jessica Lynch’s HH-60 Blackhawk would beat the nuclear flames into submission, or lucky that Saddam Hussein’s son’s were killed in a “fierce gun battle” to drown out the white flags sent up by the West Wingers. But the president rejected Hadley's resignation, again saying that he had "full confidence" in his staff and the DCI in the jobs they do.

The staff will stand up and take the blame, but suffer no consequenses for "their" screw ups? It just doesn't add up. I have more confidence in a 6-year-old kid who tells his parent that the VCR just magically broke itself, regardless of the half-eaten sandwich that's sticking out it.

- Rich