And this from a guy the President, stupidly, gave a Freedom Medal to.

WASHINGTON, April 26 — George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.

What a load of self-serving rubbish.

Tenet admits to telling the President that the case for WMD’s in Iraq was a “slam dunk,” and we’re supposed to believe that such a comment coming from the most important foreign intelligence official in the country didn’t have an impact on the President’s decision to invade? Give me a break.

With Bush believing that Iraq’s possession of WMD’s was an undeniable fact who can blame him for not spending a lit of time dilly-dallying about the invasion?  Especially just after 9/11?  We can all look back at that decision now with 20/20 hindsight and say “Well gee, it’s sort of dumb to invade because of WMD’s that don’t exist,” but that statement ignores the fact that just about every politician in the flippin’ country believed Saddam had those WMD’s.

Besides, the WMD’s were just one part of the case for war in Iraq, other parts having to do with things like terrorism, an effort to stabilize the middle east and ending the humanitarian crisis Saddam was inflicting on his own people.  But these other parts of the case for war in Iraq aren’t as easily dismissed as the WMD’s thing, so the left/media don’t talk about them.

Regardless, while this book from Tenet will be championed by the left (as anything even mildly critical of the Bush administration is), I think it has to be viewed for what it is: A pathetic stab in the back from a disgraced bureaucrat looking to both recast his role in the history of the Iraq war and pad his retirement fund by exploiting his past political position.