I mean, I’m a doctor. If someone is in danger of bleeding out, and the head surgeon is sleeping and I can’t get his wife or mistress to wake him up, we tell the lady off, or we find someone else, or we page him again and again til he answers, or we transfer the patient…a lot of times we do ALL those things at once… We don’t call one time, have his wife say he’s busy, say thank you, then sit around and say “I wish the surgeon would realize this is important” while the patient dies in front of us…

It’s a little thing called responsibility.
The problem with bureaurocracy is that too often the paperwork is more important than the result, and alas, that’s how Tenent seemed to act.

And didn’t Tenant have the power to call Louis Freeh and say: Hey Louis, there are these guys that went to a terrorist conference in Malaysia and we think they’re going to do something. Could you check out where they were?
Yes, it might have been illegal, but if had cojones he would have met Freeh somehow and arranged it…

I mean, what exactly was Tenent’s job? making sure the paper work was done correctly?

But accepted by whom? The Great Unwashed, one must presume, not anyone so sophisticated as yourself, since you clearly call into question my good friend Bob’s veracity despite a rather telling absence of supporting evidence–because, one must presume, you simply dislike the message, and my goodness, Roger, that’s very bad form. Ne nuntium necare.

It’s hard to live in D.C. when you’re not getting invited to the proper bris-and-croissant parties. Just ask David Brock. Welcome back, Bob!

Woodward seems to be under the impression that sensitive information of the war can be published and at the same time not shared with the insurgency & Al Qaeda in Iraq.

As far as I know the pentagon releases the names of the KIA after notifying the families. The papers make a fuss whenever the numbers start inching closer to an even thousand. Witch then leads me to believe Woodward is talking about unsuccessful attacks on our troops.

Now; why would the pentagon credit the enemy for its near misses? Unless the agenda was no longer finishing the job, but massaging and stretching the data to make the case for cutting and running.

Remember the story that seemed to lament the fact that more than at any other war the troops in Iraq were surviving attacks with missing limbs? Never mind that they were surviving.

Boy I couldn’t agree more.

My nephew just got back from the front lines in Iraq and I’m anxious to talk to him about how things are going. Another relative who works behind the scenes is so fed up with the MSM he won’t watch *ANY* news program anymore – even Fox.

But because they are constructed after the fact, with much hindsight, they often suffer the same deficiencies that memoirs of famous personages suffer. They string together the “they should have listened to me”, “I told them it was a bad idea”, “she wasn’t paying attention” and “he is an arrogant a***ole” statements of those no longer making decisions.

Until the historians have access to the contemporaneous papers, and minutes of the critical meetings of this era, I take the credibility of these books with a grain of salt.

Woodward interviewed Tenet for the book. That’s probably how he knew what Tenet “thought.”

What does Woodard know about responsibility? Has he ever been responsible for anything — does he even pay his own secretary’s salary? I doubt this very much. Has he ever had to make decisions that could get people killed, leaving families without loved ones? No. Has he ever had to struggle with an enormously hard problem, only to discover that there are no good solutions, only bad ones? No.

Nonethess Woodward, like all talkers, feels free to pass judgment on doers. Condoleeza Rice is incompetent. Rumsfeld must resign. Etc., etc.

But how are we to trust Woodward’s judgment, when he doesn’t understand the world of doers? We can’t. He doesn’t know what he is talking about.

It seems like things were different in the old days. It seems like reporters used to know their own limitations and respect, and give some breathing room to, people whose jobs were infinitely harder than their own.

But these days, nothing keeps the talkers from talking. From the pretty boys and girls on cable news to the aging “players” in the Beltway, no one has any restraint or knowledge of their own limitations.

I see through this. Others must too. But how many of us are there?