3 Iraq Strategists Honored by Bush
President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to three figures who were central to his Iraq policy: former CIA Director George J. Tenet, former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer III and retired Gen. Tommy Franks.
Some Democrats suggested Bush should have looked elsewhere, at least in the case of Tenet, in awarding the government’s highest civilian honor.
Bush lauded all three for playing “pivotal roles in great events” and for advancing the cause of liberty in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Tenet, who left the CIA in July after seven years as director, has been criticized for intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Iraq war.
The CIA also has drawn criticism for its part in flawed estimates that Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he “would have reached a different conclusion” on Tenet. “I don’t think [he] served the president or the nation well,” Levin said.
Bremer, the top civilian U.S. official in postwar Iraq, oversaw the transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government in June.
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