To get a sense on Tenet’s "tell all" book and his media appearances tomorrow, which accuse anyone but him and GWB of errors, consider the opinion of two political very different folks involved in the "action" to "fix the truth" on Iraq.
From the far right ex-CIA guy Michael F. Scheuer writes:
Tenet now paints himself as a scapegoat for an administration in which there never was "a serious consideration of the implications of a U.S. invasion," insisting that he warned Bush, Cheney and their Cabinet about the risks of occupying Iraq. Well, fine; the CIA repeatedly warned Tenet of the inevitable disaster an Iraq war would cause — spreading bin Ladenism, spurring a bloody Sunni-Shiite war and lethally destabilizing the region.
[…]
Tenet’s attempts to shift the blame won’t wash. At day’s end, his exercise in finger-pointing is designed to disguise the central, tragic fact of his book. Tenet in effect is saying that he knew all too well why the United States should not invade Iraq, that he told his political masters and that he was ignored. But above all, he’s saying that he lacked the moral courage to resign and speak out publicly to try to stop our country from striding into what he knew would be an abyss.
From the moderate center ex-CIA guy Larry C Johnson chimes in:
Sorry George. Too little and way too damn late. You had ample opportunity to blow the whistle on the Bush bullshit but you played ball. I do not give a damn whether you did or did not say the case for war was a "slam dunk". You signed off on Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations. You, more than any other U.S. Government senior official, were in the unique position to know that the Secretary of State was selling a pack of lies. And you sat behind him nodding affirmatively like a bobblehead doll.
[…]
Most importantly and tragically, you betrayed your country. Instead of resigning in protest you provided the Bush Administration the pretext of respectability and became the scapegoat for their misdeeds. Your silence contributed to the willingness of the public to support the disastrous war in Iraq which has killed more than 3000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
If one is slashed by the right sided media and the barely left sided media one may rise out of it as a centrist. (Still usually unsuccessful as Sen. Biden will attest).
But when the right sided experts bash you just like the left sided experts do and both do so for rather irrelevant technicals like standing up for the truth, you might consider to be the asshole everyone thinks you really are.