Incurious George

Poor George Tenet, what an ingrate. Four years after the Iraq war started on his watch at the CIA, two-plus years after he received the Medal of Freedom — and burdened with a $4 million book contract — he whines in print about the way he was misunderstood.

He is upset in a new book about the two words that will appear in the lead of his obituary: slam dunk. Tenet famously used the phrase in the Oval Office to describe the easy case for war, the likelihood of finding weapons of mass destruction — or something. That part is already getting purposefully mushy. At the time, the Bush administration quickly embraced the phrase. Vice President Dick Cheney scurried over to the Sunday talk shows to repeat Tenet's words.

If there is any justice in the world, Tenet's tome will have a short life on bookstore shelves and quickly head for the remainder bin. Writing a book to salvage his reputation might be predictable, but it is also, well, cheesy.

Does anyone remember Tenet being especially noisy or contrary as the intelligence community was trashed for being wrong or inappropriately silent about both the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or the run-up to the Iraq war? Tenet sat behind Secretary of State Colin Powell when Powell made his spectacularly unsubstantiated and subsequently empty speech at the United Nations.

A furious Tenet might have resigned in protest over the use and abuse of intelligence, and his new allegations that President Bush never engaged in any serious discussions about going to war. Nope. Incurious George was silent until the publicity rounds for his book.

Tenet eventually stood up with former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer and retired Gen. Tommy Franks to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. How is that for three of a kind?

Tenet's stormy appearance on "60 Minutes" on CBS Sunday night attracted as much press attention for his defense of the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques." The words are used to take the edge off a blunter description, torture, which Tenet denies they represent. This drew a rebuke from Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who suffered six years of euphemism in a North Vietnamese prison during the war.

One can only hope Tenet's book is the publishing equivalent of "Snakes on a Plane," a cinematic flop of epic proportions. The value to the public is about the same.