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International-UN-NGOs
Global intel failure on Iraqi WMDs
2004-07-02
The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that a worldwide intelligence failure led to the belief that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the war, the panel’s chairman said Thursday. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said he expects his committee to release at least part of the report next week, probably Wednesday. Interviewed after a groundbreaking ceremony for a new building, Roberts said the report generally concludes that intelligence agencies worldwide engineered an "assumption train" that led them to conclude that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Roberts said various Iraqi military officials thought other Iraqi officials controlled weapons of mass destruction, and that there was evidence that Iraq was poised to become the "Grand Central Station" of a trade in such weapons. "These conclusions literally beg for changes within the intelligence community," he said. "What we had was a worldwide intelligence failure."
But maybe they weren't so dumb, after all...
In Washington, the House Armed Services Committee’s senior Democrat, Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton, said the conclusions "could very well be correct."
Or they could be wrong. Or they could be partially correct. They could also be partially wrong, but that's covered by the partially correct option...
"The intelligence we got, particularly on Iraq and regarding weapons of mass destruction, just didn’t turn out to be correct," Skelton said.
Except for the places where it was correct...
And Roberts suggested that even Saddam himself believed his regime had weapons of mass destruction. "People who had the WMD and all of that either kept it, sold it, hid it, so on and so forth," Roberts said. "Saddam, I think, still thinks today that he had it." Roberts said the committee found that intelligence agencies did not rely enough on "human intelligence" gathering after 1998.
Ummm... Yeah. I guess. Except that HUMINT is the least reliable form of intel. I'd trust info from a couple commanders on the phone, discussing a launch, before I'd trust an agent report saying they weren't gonna.
And after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, he said, intelligence agencies were more likely to base conclusions on incomplete information because they were worried about further attack.
It's called "better safe than sorry."
"What you had was a great intelligence assumption train," he said. "Everybody assumed that Saddam Hussein would reconstitute his program. There was a lot of empirical evidence in regards to ties to terrorism, and so the assumption train just added on more cars. It wasn’t backed up by the necessary backup to make those kind of conclusions."
If there was empirical evidence, then they should have been basing their assumptions on it. Or did they change the definition of "empirical"?
But Roberts also quoted what he said was Kay’s conclusion: "That country had become a very chaotic state and was about to be Grand Central Station for the real proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — you know, willing buyer, willing seller." Furthermore Roberts said, "When we talk to some of the military generals of the Iraqi Republican Guard, one general will say, ’I thought General So-and-so had it.’ You talk to General So-and-so, and he says, ’I thought he had it.’ Saddam thought he had it as well." Roberts said the panel will make its conclusions public, but he didn’t know how much supporting information will be included because of ongoing discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency about how much material must remain classified.
Well, don't go throwing empirical evidence in there. It's notoriously unreliable...
For weeks, the committee and the CIA had been in conflict about how much of the material in the reports must remain classified. Roberts said initially the CIA removed more than half of the information in the 410-page report. Roberts said the changes "eviscerated" the report, but he still hopes to see at least 80 percent of it made public.
I'd leave it "eviscerated," rather than risk compromising sources and methods. But then, I'm not a politician.
"We got into a situation here where people whose job it is to classify things, if we took a primary or elementary reading book and the sentence said, `See Spot run,’ they would probably classify ’Spot,"’ Roberts said.
Posted by:Dan Darling

#6  Jules, (1) it seems we do classify chemical weapons as WMDs. Just yesterday a friend in Army intel was musing that it seemed like we have drifted into adopting what were Soviet categories for WMD -- chem and bio, in addition to nukyler, which in some ways is the only technology deserving of the "M" in WMD. (2) the attacks in Kurdistan happened, I suppose nailing down orders/responsibility for them will be a significant part of the trial(s) whose first step we saw yesterday on TV. (3) Pretty sure Iraq never documented disposal of WMD stocks -- the Dec. 10 declaration was their "final opportunity," and they of course missed it. I believe Mr. Blix's final report says as much.

.com, thanks for your kind words. The whole "intelligence failure" thing is driving me crazy, as is the general misperception about the limits of intel (even under favorable conditions) and intel's relationship to pre-emption in the current world situation. I had a chance to raise these topics and the value of an education effort at an extraordinarily interesting level, and while there was agreement on substance, there was too much concern about being seen as making excuses -- thus the cycle perpetuates.

I am baffled by almost every aspect of the Wilson affair. The WH handling of the brouhaha was as inexplicable as Wilson's indiscretion and posturing were indefensible. I think the status quo to which so many career folks seem wedded is much longer-standing than "Clintonian," especially in the MidEast. It astounds me how many of these folks just don't understand that war-time can be, uh, a bit different than your average quiet year of marginal tweaking of a dusty status quo.
Posted by: Verlaine   2004-07-02 11:38:50 PM  

#5  Somebody straighten me out here, will ya?

1.) Do we consider chemical weapons WMDs? (Yes?)

2.) Did Saddam or did he not order an attack against Kurds with chemical weapons? (Yes?)

3.) Was full documentation of the destruction of all known WMDs ever produced for verification? (Incomplete, I believe?)

Now, does the fact that we haven't found something mean it doesn't exist?

Really, some of our "experts" have a very poor understanding of the nature and wiliness of Saddam. He must be laughing in that prison cell when he reads what all these experts print about what he had and hadn't.
Posted by: jules 187   2004-07-02 2:46:20 PM  

#4  Verlaine - That's beautiful, man! Excellent summation of the WMD issue.

I offer a couple of asides for your consideration...

The Bush Admin was also intentionally set up to fail or be undermined, as well. Example: whomever at the CIA that was responsible for sending that lying sack of shit, Joe Wilson, to Nigeria re: yellowcake, etc. (lies since recanted, the asswipe) should have been sent to Leavenworth for a hard 20 - same for Wilson. And we haven't yet touched upon the subversive acts within the State Dept to ensure the failure of various steps along the way.

One could easily assert that there was a significant portion of the bureaucracy intent upon utter sabotage of any policy differing from the Clintonian status quo. I know that the political realities prevent me from having what -> I <- want, as I try to point out to certain parties here on occasion, but given my druthers, there would be a significant number of gallows built and used hard.

Sedition, unpunished.
Posted by: .com   2004-07-02 1:36:01 PM  

#3  Whether "stockpiles" of WMD are found or not, I don't buy the whole conceptual basis for the "intelligence failure" conclusion here.

First, it implies that "hard" targets like WMD in the Ba'athist dictatorship SHOULD be penetrated and accurately ascertained and that they actually are, on some regular basis, in comparable situations. Nonsense. The margin of error in such cases is unavoidably large, and probably irreducibly so, though of course no effort can be spared to reduce it with each new situation.

Second, the stakes involved in WMD/terror assessments, as we understand the reality of the world post-9/11, dictate that the prudent approach is to accept the wide margin of error in such assessments, and act on them.

Hard to say before the report is released, but it seems from various public statements that the committee buys into the inversion of logic with respect to pre-emption and intel that is currently pandemic in Washington.

Though only the administration can be blamed for absolutely refusing to clearly articulate this part -- the central part -- of their rationale for taking down the Iraqi regime, the war did not rest substantially on the assessment that Iraq currently possessed large WMD stockpiles (even though that was believed to be the case, and added some urgency to the situation). It was a pre-emptive action to remove a threat that was either present or "gathering," and whose location along that continuum was absolutely beyond the capacity of intelligence to divine. DOD Und.Sec. Feith, at an AEI event two months ago, began some remarks on the war by saying that the rationale for taking out the Iraqi regime didn't rest on one or more particular narrow assessments of the factual situation in March 2003 WRT particular WMD issues, but instead on the overall menace posed by that regime because of its history of recklessness and terror-support, its resources and capabilities, and its malevolence, none of which could be contained or deterred and which posed an unacceptable level of threat in the current world situation.

David Kay said in the spring that the limitations of intel would effectively crimp any pre-emptive approach to future threats. Absolutely backwards. The irreducible imperfections of intelligence on such things as terror groups, closed regimes, and WMD technologies are one of the main things DRIVING the pre-emption option. Much, much better safe than sorry, in this situation, and that's what pre-emption is all about.

There's a gross and oversimplified misunderstanding of the capacities of intel, especially WRT to murky and (unfortunately, newly urgent) issues like terrorism and WMD. Sadly, no one in the administration has taken the lead to educate the public, post-9/11. They're busy -- and it's too easy to criticize as special pleading. But the result will be the coming slugfest by the gladiators of glibness -- one side will dredge up Stansfied Turner and Church and Clinton-era budgets etc etc, the other will posture like an Iraqi teenager on a burnt-out Humvee, jumping up and down and screaming "intelligence failure!" without offering any substantive advice.

Decision-makers and the intel structures they rely on will go on as they must, making guesses and judgements in many situations where the picture is murky and the stakes are literally tens of thousands of lives. But the misled public and the indulgent media and Congress will largely continue to expect perfection.
Posted by: Verlaine   2004-07-02 1:22:14 PM  

#2  Tibor, they're showing up already. There have been chemical artillery shells found all over Iraq. The aborted attack in Jordan a few months ago involved chemicals shipped from Syria that were claimed to have originated in Iraq. The goal posts are so far away now that nothing can ever be admitted by the media.
Posted by: Formerly Dan   2004-07-02 12:12:34 PM  

#1  Won't they be embarrassed when the WMDs turn up in the next few months?
Posted by: Tibor   2004-07-02 12:05:27 PM  

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