On "60 Minutes" last night, George Tenet fingered Richard Perle as the agonist behind the Iraq War. Tenet said he ran into the prince of darkness on Sept. 12, 2001, at the White House and Perle was already pushing for war with Saddam. On Charlie Rose this afternoon, Tenet’s former chief of staff, John O. Brennan, said that the "disastrous" war plans were formed by "Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz" in the belief that it would be a "cakewalk." He said: "At the end of the day the decision rested with the policy makers." Tyler Drumheller, who served the CIA in Europe, (and authored On the Brink), then echoed Tenet and Brennan, saying that Perle and Feith "made the [determination] long before they came into office" that the U.S. should invade Iraq.
None of this is news. What is news is that prominent former gov’t officials are mainstreaming the critique of the neocons as the authors of the present disaster. The next question is, Why did they do it?
