Twisted Values Lead To Honors For Three Who

General Tommy Franks was one of the trio. He barreled his forces through Iraq with breathtaking speed. But he left lots of hot spots, like Fallujah, unscathed and ready to blow up later into major theaters of combat.

Franks also failed to assume control over tons of live ammunition as he rushed into Iraq. Now those hundreds of tons of arms are in the hands of the other side. He also stood by casually while Iraq’s historic treasures were looted.

What apparently blindsided Franks was the insurgency that followed the invasion, and changed the nature of what America was doing there; but he shouldn’t have been blindsided. He had heard other general officers describe the possibilities.

But General Tommy Franks is ‘a good ‘ole boy’ who hails from the same area as George Bush: Midland, Texas. He was named to command the strike force when the general who was in line for the command had the temerity to question how the task could be accomplished with the limited troops and overall resources available.

And Gen. Tommy Franks is the man who, after 9/11, declared that if there was ever another attack similar to that, it would end the American "experiment" with democracy. He made that outrageous comment when he was about to retire, indicating to all who cared to listen that at least one prominent American general believes that after more than 200 years of democracy, the American form of government is so fragile that it will be done away with if attacked more than once on the home ground. One wonders what Tommy Franks and his supporter, Mr. Bush, would find to replace democracy?

OK, it might be said that Franks at least was trying to achieve the military goal in Iraq, and at was doing what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was ordering him to do. But naming him a national hero is not only premature, but a bit over the top.

Maybe the prestigious medal has something to do with Frank’s possible status as a future political candidate for Mr. Bush's now-radicalized political party. If that is the case, then the honor was already tarnished when it was given, let alone how it might be diminished by being awarded to someone who has so little faith in American democracy.

L. Paul Bremmer

The second Bush man to step up to get his medal was L. Paul Bremmer, who ran Iraq to supposedly help the crushed nation get on its domestic feet. But one of his first actions was, of course, to disband the Iraq Army. That naturally had the effect of giving license to wholesale looting, the emergence of war-lords with armed followers, and other factors that have since put Iraq on its knees, choking on its own dust, for lack of any overall, coherent leadership.

Of course this meant that the only leader was Bremmer himself, who ruled like a Roman Consul-General. The only hope for safety and any measure of regularity in daily life became the American military, ill equipped as it was to take on the role of a police force. All of this, in turn, led to the springing up of groups of ‘insurgents,’ groups that fight very much like the American Colonials did in the late 1700’s; that is, with hit-and-run tactics against an occupying force.

During Bremmer’s time in Iraq, America came to realize it is definitely in a terrorist war and that Iraq has become, by far, the most terrorist-ridden nation on earth.

So, then, is this really someone who was in touch with the war effort and its overall goals, at least those publicly stated by Mr. Bush and his proxies? The hard fact is that if Mr. Bremmer had acted differently, there might not be quite as big a war as we have now.

Bravo: give Bremmer his medal.

George Tenet

And right along with that line of thinking, President Bush must have recognized the need to add a third member to the sorry triumvirate. That surely meant that George Tenet, the man whose words and deeds led to justification for an attack on Iraq, and later to a wholesale shakeup of the intelligence hierarchy, should be honored.

Oh, sure, the other two guys let bad orders or misplaced beliefs drive their actions, in the midst of unusual situations, and thereby steer them the wrong way, yet by comparison they were amateurs. But not Tenet.

Tenet, a Democrat, appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton to head the Central Intelligence Agency, bent over backwards to please his new, Republican, boss. Apparently he had come to like his position and to retain it was willing to meet whatever real or perceived demands Mr. Bush might make; the boss is the boss, given him what he wants.

President Bush wanted to know what the situation was in Iraq vis-à-vis ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ Well, that was a big question and it required a big answer.

After talking with his people, those who were supposed to have experience in that area of expertise, Tenet came to Bush and told him just what Bush wanted to hear.

Damn it, yes, there were massive destruction devices bristling virtually everywhere in Iraq. There was one weapon, he said, that the enemy could set up in 45 minutes that could do vast damage in the region. In short, he told the president that Iraq was a cesspool of heinous killing machines.

Well, thank goodness that Tenet had everything pinpointed just right.

The question of whether or not WMD's would be found was, said Tenet, a "slam dunk."

Thunder in his words, he unleashed saber ratting extraordinaire in the political structure. Bush took the words as gospel, since they confirmed what he wanted to believe, and he and his administration rallied Congress and the American people, resulting in a call to war in Iraq.

Only afterwards did Americans find that the intelligence was all wrong.

No weapons of mass destruction, none, existed.

Tenet was relying on decade-old material, and simply extrapolating that the same things must be there now. A terrible mistake.

Luckily, it played like a fine-tuned piano when Bush heard it. It was the echo he wanted. And Tenet was good at keeping the sources of information quiet and obscure.

Take his handling of the tragedy that started all this – the terrorist bombings of four hijacked passenger jets that ended in crashes at the two towered World Trading Center in New York, another hitting the Pentagon outside Washington and the other crashing in a field in Pennsylvania, with a death total of some 3,000 and a nation shocked. It wasn’t long before that shock was politically fanned into flame by a combination of fear mongering and patriotic anger.

Osama bin Laden and his minions did it, Americans were told.

Other than that, Tenet’s Central Intelligence Agency was without any real suggestions for a solution. So now the Congress and Bush have put a new structure in place for future intelligence. It has taken more than three years to produce that system.

Mr. Bush’s CIA Opportunity

Thank goodness Tenet came along when he did to demonstrate just how poorly the CIA was doing. Had he not left things in such utter shambles, the huge job of fixing the intelligence system might never have been recognized as a priority problem, or afforded Mr. Bush such a great opportunity to reconfigure the American intelligence community to better suit himself.

Why this was one of the largest and most public intelligence failures ever, and now it has led to a consolidation of power in the intelligence ‘community,’ and a reorganization of the CIA to make it more closely tailed to Mr. Bush and his views, and therefore more responsive to the White House in every way.

One can see how Mr. Bush would feel Tenet truly does deserve the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As a result of Mr. Tenet’s machinations, Mr. Bush has the presidential freedom he needs to run the rest of this war just as he has done heretofore: guns blazing.

12/20/04