Medal of Freedom for key figures in Iraq war
Washington -- President Bush bestowed the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Tuesday on three of the central architects and executors of the war in Iraq,
Tenet's assessments of Iraq's unconventional weapons, and the huge gaps in America's intelligence system, became the focus of investigations into how the president and his administration built a case for war. Bush made no mention of that or of the shake-up at the CIA after Tenet's departure, but he praised him as "one of the first to recognize and address the growing threat to America from radical terrorist networks."
Tenet should have been fired months ago - instead, he receives the Medal of Freedom?
Giving Bremer the award is only slightly less assinine:
Inside the White House, there is still significant debate about Bremer's judgments, including his decisions to disband the defeated Iraqi army and to pursue an aggressive policy of "de-Baathification," the broad exclusion of former Baath Party members from the newly reconstituted interim government. Those moves are widely regarded as fundamental mistakes that alienated hundreds of thousands of armed and unemployed troops, some of whom joined the insurgency.
) I think that's why some who generally support the administration, like Poleaxe, can agree that Bush's action here is simply disgraceful. 