An Open Letter to George Tenet
You were well aware that the White House tried to present as fact intelligence you knew was unreliable.

Durbin kept silent on prewar knowledge
The Senate's No. 2 Democrat says he knew that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war but remained silent because he was sworn to secrecy as a member of the intelligence committee.
"I was angry about it. [But] frankly, I couldn't do much about it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy. We can't walk outside the door and say the statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that is being given to this Congress."
Mr. Durbin, whose floor comments were part of the debate before yesterday's passage of an emergency war-funding bill, said he and half the Democrats on the intelligence committee voted against the war over concerns of the White House's "very flimsy case, but it was given to the American people as a proven fact."

Training Iraqi troops no longer driving force in U.S. policy
"The goal was to put the Iraqis in charge. The problem is we didn't know how to do it and we underestimated the insurgency," said Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Many officials are vague about when the U.S. will know when troops can begin to return home. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. is trying to buy "time for the Iraqi government to provide the good governance and the economic activity that's required."
One State Department official, who also asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject, expressed the same sentiment in blunter terms. "Our strategy now is to basically hold on and wait for the Iraqis to do something,"

"Remember the rug?"
When Bush went to Ohio on Thursday to talk about terrorism, he ended up musing about marriage and chicken-plucking plants, the agony of death and his Oval Office rug, which resembles a sunburst.
Bush told the story about how his first presidential decision was to pick a rug for the Oval Office, a task he quickly cast to his wife. He told her to make sure the rug reflected optimism "because you can't make decisions unless you're optimistic that the decisions you make will lead to a better tomorrow."

Later, when he talked about his hope for succeeding in Iraq, Bush said, "Remember the rug?"

Murder in QuickTime
But as the television coverage continued for hour upon hour, what bothered me the most was simply the endless loop of photos of the killer and the repetition of his name.

His picture. His name.

His picture.

His name.

Everyone knows who he is now.

Just the way he wanted it.

Which is why Wednesday's arrival of the murderer's ghoulish "press kit" in the mail at NBC didn't shock me at all. To me, it was the next logical step. Welcome to mass murder in the YouTube age. Hello, QuickTime immortality.