|
Advertisement | Rice Dismisses Tenet's AccusationsSecretary Of State Doubts Former CIA Director's Memories On Iraq, AfghanistanWASHINGTON, April 29, 2007 ![]() ![]() Rice On Iraq, TenetSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice tells Bob Schieffer the President will not compromise on the Iraq funding bill and that she doesn't recall George Tenet pitching a preemptive strike on Afghanistan. | Share/Embed (CBS/AP) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Face The Nation dismissed accusations made by former CIA Director George Tenet about the Bush administration's early decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan. Tenet tells Scott Pelley in a 60 Minutes interview that, before the September 11 attacks, he told Rice in a White House meeting the U.S. should take preemptive action inside Afghanistan. "We need – we need to – we need to consider immediate action inside Afghanistan now," Tenet remembers telling Rice, who was then National Security Advisor. "We need to – we need to move to the offensive." Rice, however, said Tenet's claim was a "new fact" and she would "have to look." She told Bob Schieffer, "It's very interesting because that's not what George told the 9/11 Commission at the time. He said that he felt that we had gotten it." Asked why Tenet would make the claim if it wasn't true, Rice said she didn't know. "I don't know what we were supposed to preemptively strike in Afghanistan," she said. "Perhaps somebody can ask that." Tenet also claims that the administration never had a serious debate about whether Iraq posed an imminent threat or whether to tighten existing sanctions before its 2003 invasion. "The president came in, in 2001, determined to try to deal with the Iraqi situation perhaps even by sanctions, by smart sanctions," Rice said on Face The Nation. "There was an extended period of time of trying other efforts, including the president's September address to the U.N. in 2002." Tenet also tells 60 Minutes the way the Bush administration has used his now famous "slam dunk" comment — which he admits saying in reference to making the public case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — is both disingenuous and dishonorable. "It's the most despicable thing that ever happened to me," Tenet says. "You don't do this. You don't throw somebody overboard just because it's a deflection. Is that honorable? It's not honorable to me." Tenet says to have the president base his entire decision to go to war on such a remark is unbelievable. Rice said she remembers Tenet using the "slam dunk" line once but said the intelligence failures leading up to the invasion of Iraq were a worldwide problem. "We all believed the intelligence was strong," she said. "It wasn't just a problem with intelligence in the United States, it was an intelligence problem worldwide. Services across the world thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction." © MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. | Advertisement 30,000 Buried In China Quake DebrisMore Than 12,000 Confirmed Dead; Aftershocks, Crumbled Infrastructure Hinder Rescuers |
|
|
Comments [ + Post Your Own ]
Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not CBS News stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.