Tenet, Drunk in Bandar's Pool: "The bastards are setting me up-I am not going to take the hit"

[kpete]

George Tenet, Drunk in Bandar's Pool, Screaming about Jews

16 Dec 2008 12:03 pm
I just picked up Patrick Tyler's forthcoming book, A World of Trouble, about America's tortured relations with the Middle East, and the prologue contains this whopper of a scene, one that is quite devastating, if true: An enraged George Tenet, drunk on scotch, flailing about Prince Bandar's Riyadh pool, screaming about the Bush Administration officials who were just then trying to pin the Iraq WMD fiasco on him:

A servant appeared with a bottle. Tenet knocked back some of the scotch. Then some more. They watched with concern. He drained half the bottle in a few minutes.

"They're setting me up. The bastards are setting me up," Tenet said, but "I am not going to take the hit."

And then this:

"According to one witness, he mocked the neoconservatives in the Bush administration and their alignment with the right wing of Israel's political establishment, referring to them with exasperation as, "the Jews."

Tyler reports in a footnote that, when asked, Tenet initially denied staying at Prince Bandar's palace, then denied that he had said anything in the pool. "He disputed the remarks attributed to him and denied that his memory might have been affected by the amount of alcohol he was reported to have consumed on top of a sleeping pill," Tyler reports.

more at:
http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/12/george_tenet_drunk_in_bandars.php

[el_bryanto]

1. That's an interesting quote

Kind of a mine field I guess.

It certainly is problematic to note that many of the Neo Conservatives who seemed to build America's foreign policy around the goal of protecting Israel were Jewish.

Bryant

[DonEBrook]

3. I'm not sure we are allowed to mention that here.

:shrug:

[ensho]

5. lol its amazing the thread has lasted this long & what Tenet said

is very interesting

[Kalyke]

8. Why? It is true (although I'm sure Tenet said it derisively).

I'm married to a Jewish man and he knows the neo-cons, for the most part, are Jewish and he can't stand them.

:shrug:

[DonEBrook]

14. You have a good hubby.

:D

[immoderate]

9. If you're going to yell, yell the truth.

I agree this is touchy territory. But I am Jewish, and I don't think that right wing Jews should get any more cover here than right wing Christians or Muslims or anything else.

I have no trouble believing that Tenet said this.

--IMM

[HamdenRice]

11. Point of information: Originally, the neo-cons were not Jewish, but "white ethnic"

There was a neo-conservative movement that was mostly concerned with domestic policy, and whose big disappointment was the transformation of the civil rights movement into a "black power movement" that had little interest in maintaining its alliance with urban liberal white ethnics, and these urban, formerly liberal white ethnics linked the decline of civil rights and the rise of "black power" with urban disorder.

So it was not a "Jewish" movement, but a "white ethnic" movement, and if you look at the original members, there were as many Catholics or other white ethnics, as Jews: Jane Kirkpatrick, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Zbigniew Brzezinski, for example.

[cali]

12. pshaw. And many were Jewish and many were WASPS

Scoop Jackson ring a bell? And neoconservatism was initially concerned more with foreign policy.

[HamdenRice]

18. Wrong: "And neoconservatism was initially concerned more with foreign policy"

No, it wasn't.

[rvablue]

15. Sometimes I can't believe my eyes on DU. Exhibit A: Neocon=Moynihan??? n/t

[HamdenRice]

17. Yes, Nixon "benign neglect" appointee Moynihan

and neo con UN ambassador. Do you have any actual content to add?

[DonEBrook]

2. "I NEVER said that

and I won't say it again!"

[lumberjack_jeff]

4. "I was never there, and they didn't have any scotch." n/t

[DonEBrook]

13. Oh, even better!

Yup.

[fla nocount]

6. I wouldn't swim in his pool, he keeps it too warm. n/t

[NV Whino]

7. But, but, but...

he got the Medal of Freedom award.

[Poll_Blind]

10. Wait-wait-wait! This is NOT a joke? Satire? This is something that actually happened?

:wtf:

PB

[UTUSN]

16. K&R #3 n/t