In the case of Iraq and with reference to the original article, I believe the US Military leaders (the Generals) should have been more forceful about explaining the difficulties that could be expected with the invasion. From what I've read former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be a very difficult boss and that he in fact fired several high ranking general officers when they did speak out -- see General Eric Shinseki and General John Riggs

General Shinseki is famous for his remarks to the U.S. Senate Armed Services committee before the war in Iraq in which he said "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for post-war Iraq

General Riggs Riggs was blunt and outspoken on a number of issues and publicly contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by arguing that the Army was overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan and needed more troops.

I suspect there were others as well who did speak out and suffered as a result, but it was their responsibility to speak up regardless of the consequences to their personal careers.

And the argument could be made that the congress should have done it's homework about the Administration's request for authorization for the Iraq invasion. The intelligence was available to them if they had bothered to ask for the information. The current book by the former CIA Director Tenet shows that there were no serious attempts to debate the issue. By the way, do you suppose that Tenet will give back his medal of freedom awarded him by the president? He certainly should and donate the royalties of his book to the US military personnel and their families who have paid such an enormous price for this war. A war that he might have prevented if he had done his job correctly.

Dwight

Tenet's family name alone says he won't give his medal back. 'Tenet' means 'he keeps [it]' (Latin).

FredPuli , I think that you're correct; I don't believe that he will be giving it back. I've seen some interviews with a couple of former CIA people at http://MSNBC.com saying they believe that Tenet was far too willing to give the Bush Administration whatever they wanted to hear.

An open letter to Tenet from six former CIA officers is shown on this page. By the way, I first saw this letter at the MSNBC site, Keith Oberman section.

Dwight

I can see that Tenet may be a sycophant and responsible, in part at least, for the launching of the war against Iraq, but that doesn't seem much different than these C.I.A operatives who supposedly knew better also. If he should have resigned and gone public, didn't they have the same moral obligation. Did they suck up to their boss - him, as they accuse him of having done? I don't recall hearing anybody in government protesting against the justification before the invasion, at least not in this country. Where were all these patriots when we needed them?