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| Home Front: Politix |
| The Dots Never Existed |
| 2004-07-11 |
| The more he read, the more uneasy he became. In early February 2003 Colin Powell was putting the finishing touches on his speech to the United Nations spelling out the case for war in Iraq. Across the Potomac River, a Pentagon intelligence analyst going over the facts in the speech was alarmed at how shaky that case was. Powell's presentation relied heavily on the claims of one especially dubious Iraqi defector, dubbed "Curve Ball" inside the intel community. A self-proclaimed chemical engineer who was the brother of a top aide to Iraqi National Congress chief Ahmad Chalabi, Curve Ball had told the German intelligence service that Iraq had a fleet of seven mobile labs used to manufacture deadly biological weapons. But nobody inside the U.S. government had ever actually spoken to the informant—except the Pentagon analyst, who concluded the man was an alcoholic and utterly useless as a source. He recalled that Curve Ball had shown up for their only meeting nursing a "terrible hangover." After reading Powell's speech, the analyst decided he had to speak up, according to a devastating report from the Senate intelligence committee, released last week, on intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq war. He wrote an urgent e-mail to a top CIA official warning that there were even questions about whether Curve Ball "was who he said he was." Could Powell really rely on such an informant as the "backbone" for the U.S. government's claims that Iraq had a continuing biological-weapons program? The CIA official quickly responded: "Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say," he wrote. "The Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about." The saga of Curve Ball is just one of many wince-inducing moments to be found in the 500-page Senate report, which lays out how the U.S. intelligence community utterly failed to accurately assess the state of Saddam Hussein's programs for weapons of mass destruction—and how White House and Pentagon officials, intent on taking the country to war, unquestioningly embraced the flawed conclusions. In startling detail, the bipartisan report concludes that the CIA and other agencies consistently "overstated" the evidence that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, and was actively reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program. Hampered by a "group think" dynamic that caused them to view all Iraqi actions in the harshest possible light, the committee found, U.S. intelligence officials repeatedly embellished fragmentary and ambiguous pieces of evidence, making the danger posed by Iraq appear far more urgent than it actually was. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #6 The Anonymous5701 comment was from me, BTW. Don't know what happened to my info. |
| Posted by: Tibor 2004-07-12 12:12:15 PM |
| #5 Newsweek is surely the worst "news" organ outside Europe or the Third World (at least among magazines). This is a typical bit of their work. Note the know-nothing dramatic "intent on taking the nation to war" -- uh, actually, fellas, it was intent on removing a threat that couldn't be managed, deterred, or even accurately guauged. Like 10-yr olds, the Newsweek dimwits think that US leaders seek war itself, not objectives sometimes addressed by war. Have not yet been able to read the Senate report, but it sounds like it's got a fundamental problem. How do they know we (and everyone else) were wrong in the assessments? Don't you need to know the actual situation, in order to compare it to the intel estimate? Answer: yes. So what WAS the actual situation? How can the Senate start second-guessing the process when there's no side-by-side final score? Does their report rely on an early version of the Iraq Survey Group's final report? If not -- how can they possibly evaluate pre-war intel? I personally am very skeptical of all the Syria stories -- but the point is that we don't know -- so how can most of the pre-war intel be judged flawed or incorrect? Newsweek's breathless pushing of every stupid myth in the book also assumes that the congressional committees were powerless and voiceless at all stages of the process. Not. The committees can and do haul up all and sundry to defend any analytical product Congress wants to examine or challenge. If all the Dems (and a discouraging # of spineless or dim GOPers) now whining about the intel had wanted to, they could have challenged the per-war NIE and gotten into the weeds on it. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2004-07-12 12:03:35 AM |
| #4 Anon, very solid comment. I agree. I have heard from a credible source (sorry, no link...but also no tinfoil hat)...that France and Russia were complicit in assisting Saddam remove the WMD's to Syria. This could come out at the right time. Regardless, it will be buried on P.26. |
| Posted by: Remote Man 2004-07-11 11:28:51 PM |
| #3 If I were a betting man, I would bet a lot that dots will start showing up in the coming months. I can't help coming back to that Lifson (sp?) piece about how good W is at poker. I have a feeling that there will be info coming out in the next few months that shows that the WMD and Iraq/al Qaeda intelligence wasn't really all that bad after all, and W will come out looking like the smart, decisive leader he is. To some extent, the interim Iraqi government is really being helpful in acknowledging that WMDs were taken out of the country before the war and that Syria and Iran have been sending in terrorists. The next few months may be realy fascinating. I really hope W has the strong hand he thinks he has. |
| Posted by: Anonymous5701 2004-07-11 11:14:00 PM |
| #2 Brett, Amen! And yet a majority of these same senators voted for OIF based on these same reports they're discrediting now. What worries me is that they'll use these "flawed reports" as "proof" not to take action in future against Iran, or Syria, or Soddy Arabia, or North Korea...even if the evidence of WMDs and links with Islamist terrorists are clearer and more obvious than Saddam's Iraq. It's an attempt to defang and castrate the Bush Doctrine and it's made me furious for months! (Why does noone mention the numerous--almost daily!--Iraqi violations of the No-fly zones, which was another rationale for OIF?) |
| Posted by: Jen 2004-07-11 8:29:44 PM |
| #1 The dots DID exist and they exist still. Intelligence is uncertainty and one must make JUDGEMENTS in conditions of uncertainty in situations like this. The Executive branch is the one with the decision authority in this case. One could look at these dots and say "Naw. There is no ironclad proof that Iraq has anything now like they say, so let's drop the Sanctions and let Iraq be Iraq". Alternatively, one could look at this and observe "Saddam has been our enemy for 2 decades, is involved with terrorists (exact extent unknown), has used WMD in the past, denies having WMD now, but acts as if he is hiding something. Post-9/11, we can't risk him working with terrorists for a uber-9/11 event. Period." I am pleased W showed some cojones and went after Iraq. I am apalled at 'the world's greatest deliberative body' would produce a report which neglect to mention anything about SENATE OVERSIGHT at it's obvious failure. |
| Posted by: Brett_the_Quarkian 2004-07-11 6:56:21 PM |