Tenet calls Bush a liar.

"Well, it looks as if George Tenet isn't willing to play the patsy.

Here's the key paragraph from Tenet's speech today, referring to the National Intelligence Estimate prepared in October 2002:

We said that Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009.

So when George W. Bush said, that same month:

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud

he knew that his own intelligence estimate completely discounted any imminent risk of a "mushroom cloud." And when he spoke the famous "16 words" about yellowcake in the State of the Union address in January 2003, he knew that the CIA estimated that Iraq wasn't within five years of having a nuclear weapon. That meant that there was no strategic hurry -- as opposed to a political hurry -- that compelled us to go to war the following spring, rather than waiting six months or a year to finish off the al-Qaeda hunt, stablize Afghanistan, and gather international support."

But that's separate from the question of whether the President deceived the American people about the nuclear threat from Iraq. The Director of Central Intelligence just told us, unemphatically but also unequivocally, that he did. The least you can say about this is that it can't be right for Bush and Tenet each to keep his job. If Tenet is lying, he should be fired. If Tenet is telling the truth, Bush should be replaced.