Tenet on Interrogation
Tenet on Interrogation There was never much question that news reports about George Tenet's new book, At the Center of the Storm, would focus on the former CIA director's complaints about the Bush...
...Spare a Square...
...These are people who know who's responsible for the next terrorist attack, [who] wouldn't blink an eyelash about killing you, your family, me and my family and everybody in this town...
...We would suggest, in the second edition, a "new afterword" for The New Industrial State by someone with a clear view of Galbraithian nonsense and superior academic credentials to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Say, Ann Coulter...
...He insists that what U.S...
...It didn't take long before critics began poo-pooing her proposal...
...The Galbraith tome features an admiring "new foreword" by Prof...
...We're not holding our breath...
...Readers will be able to get their fill of those excerpts from their favorite mainstream media outlets over the next couple of weeks, so we'd like to draw your attention to something unlikely to get the notice it deserves...
...As a veteran trend-spotter, The Scrapbook has noticed with dismay that modern reprints almost always feature "new forewords" by contemporary windbags to explain to us poor readers what, exactly, we are reading and, worst of all, to give us the latest thinking on the subject...
...sor Wilentz: Why a hostile riposte to Goldwater, but not to Galbraith...
...Tenet's thoughts on why the program is necessary also deserve a mention: "These [terrorist detainees] are people who will never, ever, ever tell you a thing...
...But it could have been worse...
...James K. Galbraith who, to our great surprise, considers his late Dad's work "a landmark" in economic writing and a "great work of theory...
...Paying barely a moment's attention to the Goldwater text, Kennedy swerves from harangues about Wall Street "shills" and "authoritarian preachers, mean-spirited cable-TV bully boys, and AM hate-radio jocks" to "the acerbic politics of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay . . . Karl Rove's swift-boating of White House critics and the coordinated media thuggery of Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Bob Novak, and Sean Hannity, with all of their empty accusations about liberals as traitors...
...According to a partial transcript of the 60 Minutes interview leaked to the DrudgeReport, Tenet vigorously defends the program...
...In the end, we're certain this idea will not gain any movement...
...I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together, have been able to tell us...
...Tenet, who went to the CIA after a career as a Democratic staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee, offers a different view...
...In a nation serious about fighting a war on terror, Tenet's last claim—that this program has provided better intelligence than the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA combined—should trigger second thoughts among those many armchair intelligence analysts who have called for its termination...
...It seems that they are the opening editions of something called the James Madison Library in American Politics, which is "devoted to reviving important American political writings of the recent and distant past...
...Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr...
...And it should cause another examination of the relative ineffectiveness of the three most important antiterror agencies of the U.S...
...Then we noticed that The Conscience of a Conservative is blessed with something that The New Industrial State is not: A "new afterword" as well...
...The revelaOkay, we tried but we just can't ignore singer Sheryl Crow's come-dic debut...
...Tenet on Interrogation There was never much question that news reports about George Tenet's new book, At the Center of the Storm, would focus on the former CIA director's complaints about the Bush administration and its use of intelligence...
...And, on cue, a news story late last week in the New York Times provided a look into Tenet's self-serving revisionism...
...Among other pieces of advice in the book, Jones warned students against 'making up information to present yourself as something you are not.' She wrote, 'You must always be completely honest about who you are.'" Sage advice...
...As Tenet might say, it was a "slam dunk...
...We're not sure whether the "Strong Enough" singer favors one-ply or two, but we tend to think her idea, which she describes as "in the earliest stages of development" and "worth investigating," fudges a lot of the details...
...As the Crimson reported: "In a prepared statement, Jones said she had 'misled the Institute about my academic credentials' in applying for her first job at MIT in 1979, and 'did not have the courage to correct my resume when I applied for my current job or at any time since.'" But wait, there's more...
...During an interview taped for 60 Minutes, the requisite first stop these days on the I've-got-a-book-beating-up-the-Bush-administration tour, Tenet was asked about something he does not discuss much in his book: the CIA's "enhanced interrogations" of high-value detainees...
...But instead of choosing someone whose views might be worth pondering, Professor Wilentz recruited, of all unlikely people, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recovering heroin addict and radio conspiracy theorist, who supplies a 17-page diatribe that, for sheer incoherence and irrelevance, must be endured to be believed...
...As a prelude to her Karl Rove ambush (see page 8), Crow floated this idea on how to save the environment: "I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting...
...Her profile surged last year with the publication of Less Stress, More Success, which she wrote with pediatrician Kenneth R. Ginsburg...
...Jones had attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for a short time without graduating...
...Sean Wilentz, Princeton history professor and stalwart defender of the Democratic faith, is general editor...
...is currently engaged as public advocate for his cousin Michael Skakel, convicted murderer of 15-year-old Martha Moxley, The Scrapbook chooses not to engage him on his curious outburst...
...And the two books in question are The New Industrial State by John Kenneth Galbraith (1967) and The Conscience of a Conservative (1960) by Barry Goldwater...
...James Madison Weeps The Scrapbook was pleased the other morning when two paperback volumes crossed our desk, courtesy of Princeton University Press...
...government...
...Our question, instead, is for ProfesjScrapbook tion was a shocking turn for Jones, who had been highly regarded in her field and widely praised for MIT's efforts to reduce student anxiety in college admissions...
...We could have named this item "All I Wanna Doo" or talked about how Crow is simply brown-nosing Al Gore, or...
...Can't Make This Up As reported Friday, April 27, in the Harvard Crimson, MIT's dean of admissions, Marilee Jones, after a nineyear stint in that position, resigned when her three college degrees were exposed as phony...
...Alas, the James Madison Library in American Politics is no exception...
...Well...
...And yes, we know, enough already with the cheap puns...
...Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required...
...interrogators do is not torture and is, in fact, extremely valuable in the war on terror: Here's what I would say to you, to the Congress, to the American people, to the President of the United States: I know that this program has saved lives...
...I know we've disrupted plots...
...His answers will confound Bush critics, who are guided by two articles of faith: (1) The Bush administration's interrogation techniques amount to torture, and (2) These techniques are ineffective...
...The Goldwa-ter book contains a new foreword by George F. Will...
Vol. 12 • May 2007 • No. 32
