"Never send to know for whom 'Slam Dunk' Tenet's drum beats; it beats for thee, Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld and Wolfie and Condi and Feith and . . ."

No, Georgie, just 'cause you're the Decider, that doesn't mean you're
allowed to strangle your old pal George T with his Medal of Freedom.

"History is just one damned thing after another."

--Dr. Henry Chickenkisser, in the early 1970s

Back in the day--a day that included the Nixon presidency--when New York magazine was a whole lot younger and feistier, it regularly featured political "comic-strip episodes" (for want of a better description) by the brilliant cartoonist Robert Grossman, which dealt with both local and national issues. Among the recurring characters was a certain national security adviser, later secretary of state, named Dr. Henry Chickenkisser, a pompously self-important professorial type given to philosophical meditations like the following incontrovertibly timeless truth, uttered at a time when the good doctor was finding himself under siege with bad news and hostile media questions:

"History is just one damned thing after another."

How true, Henry, how true!

(Say, does anyone know if any of those dazzling Grossman "graphic novel" prototypes from New York were ever republished?)

I like to think that even the less philosophical types now holed up in Fortress White House get that feeling most every morning when they turn on their TVs. Even on Fox News, if you're, say, Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales, holed up at the Justice Dept. (presumably with your bags packed), you have to be starting to get that feeling of being a live punching bag.

To which I say: It's about time! I mean, look what the Bush regimists have been getting away with these last six years.

I'm sure you've heard, just as I'm sure they've all heard in the bunkers at the White House and the Pentagon, that former Director of Central Intelligence (and Medal of Freedom awardee) George "Slam Dunk" Tenet has written a book. The early reports were that it wasn't going to make his former fellow freedom-fighers in the Bush regime wildly happy.

With the April 30 publication date approaching ominously, the drumbeat is getting louder. Today Al Kamen reports in his Washington Post "In the Loop" column:

Tenet's Tell-All Is a Slam Dunk to Provoke Invasion's Architects

The drums have begun sounding for the long-awaited book by former CIA director George Tenet, in which he gives his take on pre-9/11 days and on Saddam's huge cache of weapons of mass destruction.

And the drums are saying that Tenet is not going to get too many Christmas cards from Vice President Cheney's office after they read "At the Center of the Storm." Folks from down the river at the Pentagon, including former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz--a guy who's already going through a rough patch--and former defense undersecretary Douglas Feith, might also get some heartburn.

Former secretary of state Colin Powell comes out fine. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was President Bush's key adviser in engineering the Iraq invasion, doesn't come out so fine. Not fine at all.

The White House definitely won't be overjoyed, we're hearing. Tenet even takes some shots at himself and for the first time explains his astute assurance that "it's a slam-dunk case" when Bush asked him how solid the WMD evidence was.

Tenet has never really explained his views on that comment. The 500-page book--or more likely his "60 Minutes" interview on April 29, the day before the book goes on sale--will be the first time he goes over that.

Tenet, who ran the CIA from July 1997 to July 2004, did the first of two days of taping last week at Georgetown University, where he's teaching.

Do you hear those drums, boys and girl?