Then and now:

One of the things that I've long criticized George Bush for was keeping so many losers on from the Clinton administration, Tenet being foremost, but Norm Mineta another. In the case of Tenet, it isn't clear if this was part of "changing the tone in Washington," or misplaced loyalty to a family friend. (Dan Goldin was yet another, but at least there he had the excuse that it's hard to find a NASA administrator, not to mention the fact that he'd been appointed by his father.) Either way, it was a disaster.

Sunday night, Tenet gave the impression that any thought of Saddam and al Qaeda’s cooperating was pure fantasy. You never would have known that in October 2002 Tenet wrote a letter to Sen. Bob Graham that said: “We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa’ida going back a decade”; “Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qa’ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression”; “We have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qa’ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad”; “We have credible reporting that al-Qa’ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities”; and so on.

That was then. Now that the war has proved difficult and unpopular, Tenet feels safe in attacking its advocates. In a widely quoted anecdote, he says he saw Richard Perle exiting the White House on September 12, when Perle told him Iraq should be punished for the attack since it bore responsibility. Perle says this couldn’t have happened because he was in France at the time, as Bill Kristol has noted. (Tenet apparently has a problem getting the facts straight even in his post-CIA life).

Unfortunately, because his revision of history fits the current template of the Democrats and their allies in the media, he's going to continue to get a lot more attention than he deserves, with too little criticism or skepticism.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Andrew McCarthy has related thoughts, and knocks down the red-herring claims about Saddam and 911:

Now, if it’s possible, let’s give Tenet the benefit of the doubt and forget for a moment that he clearly has an ax to grind when it comes to Iraq. The fact remains that, like others in the intelligence community now running for the hills because Iraq has proved more difficult than they may have thought, Tenet is desperate to change the subject from Iraq’s complicity in jihadist terror to Iraq’s fingerprints on 9/11. He carefully tells Pelley that the CIA could never “verify” that Saddam’s regime had anything to do with 9/11. Not, mind you, that the CIA can categorically state that Iraq was uninvolved in 9/11; just that CIA (which, it turns out, can’t verify much of anything) could not verify Iraq’s involvement in those particular attacks.

Of course, that’s not the point at all. The point was whether Iraq was working with al Qaeda, not whether it was necessarily aware of and complicit in specific operations like 9/11. Al Qaeda exists — its singular purpose is — to carry out operations against the U.S. If you are helping al Qaeda at all, what on earth do you suppose you’re helping it do?

The issue is not rogue-state culpability for 9/11. After all, there’s no hard evidence that the Taliban was involved in 9/11. Yet we attacked and overthrew the Taliban — a military incursion even liberal Democrats say they supported — because the Taliban was aiding and abetting al Qaeda. No one contends that our rationale requires proof of direct Taliban involvement in 9/11.

Such, though, is the logic-challenged nature of the Bush Deranged.

[Update at 11 AM EDT]

According to George Tenet, Saddam would have had nukes by now.