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March 31, 2005Anyone Surprised?By Zach NeumannThis morning, the NY Times reported that U.S. intelligence pertaining to WMD’s in Iraq was patently incorrect. I don’t think this comes as a shock to anyone. Check out the story: A report made public this morning concludes that American intelligence agencies were "dead wrong" in almost all of their prewar assessments about the state of unconventional weapons in Iraq, and that on issues of this importance "we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude." It adds, "The harm done to American credibility by our all too public intelligence failures in Iraq will take years to undo." The report concludes that while many other nations believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, "in the end, it was the United States that put its credibility on the line, making this one of the most public - and most damaging - intelligence failures in recent American history." The failure was in large part the result of analytical shortcomings, the report adds, saying "intelligence analysts were too wedded to their assumptions about Saddam's intentions," referring to the ousted Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein." But in the end the agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, collected too little for the "analysts to analyze, and much of what they did collect was either worthless or misleading." The failures the commission found in Iraq are not repeated everywhere, the report says, but "flaws we found in the intelligence community's Iraq performance are still too common," the report declares. It adds: "We must use the lessons from those failings, and from our successes as well, to improve our intelligence for the future, and do so with a sense of urgency." The Economist had something along these lines last week. I guess it goes without saying that the greatest tool in the war against terrorism is information. Given the fact that the application of conventional military force does little to halt the spread of non state militants, it is vital that we fully develop our special forces, elite police units and intelligence agencies. Despite arguments made to the contrary by the Bushies in the National Security Strategy (NSS), America’s primary response to the threat of terrorism is still regime change. This has not (and will not) work. Though I’m not a fan of Donald Rumsfeld, I think he realizes this to an extent. While he has (obviously) supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, he has also attempted to revamp the capabilities of the U.S. military to deal with unconventional threats. To a large extent, this has included major changes to our intelligence infrastructure. Hopefully, his proposals will be taken seriously (despite suffering a significant setback last week). Posted by Zach Neumann at March 31, 2005 09:51 AM | TrackBack
Comments
My first question is, when is Hans Blix getting his apology, and should Bush merely grovel at Blix's feet or submit himself for tarring and feathering? My second question concerns the quote, "The harm done to American credibility by our all too public intelligence failures in Iraq will take years to undo." What about the harm to our soldiers and their families, and the harm done to Iraqis and their families? What about the fact that people died and are still dying? There's no way to "undo" death and destruction. Posted by: TxMomma at March 31, 2005 12:20 PMNo--the worst intelligence failure in history was the failure to stop the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That breakdown put the Bushites on notice that careful development of intelligence was the highest priority. Yet they invaded Iraq purely on the basis of (wrong) intelligence--if this report is to be believed. The alternatives are 1. criminal negligence, and 2. massive lying by Bush and his henchpeople, using dummied-up intelligence as cover. Hmmmmm. How about: fool the country once, shame on you--fool the country twice, you're impeached and prosecuted for war crimes. Posted by: Demo Memo at March 31, 2005 06:26 PMPeter-- I don't see any dispute between Zach and me. I'm all for sharpening the intelligence agencies, reorganizing the military to better fight irregular actions, recruiting sharper minds to the intelligence effort, and so on. My comment is based on the courtroom principle that, given the circumstances, a party to a case "knew or should have known". Monumental screw-ups during the summer of 2001 showed beyond a shadow of doubt that the US had incompetent intelligence gathering and analysis. However, regarding Iraq the Bushites want once again to blame the intelligence. But Bush had 18 months to overhaul the intelligence gathering, and the harshest sort of demonstration regarding the consequences of getting it wrong in Iraq. Inquiring minds have to ask whether "bad intelligence" should be an admissable defense. Despite the sort-of-exoneration offered by the current report, I see only two ways of reading the evidence: dereliction of duty, or bald-face lying. Posted by: Demo Memo at March 31, 2005 11:44 PM
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