Blaming the Intelligence Community
One day
after the Senate issued a report stating that there were major failings in the
intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, the nation is left to
contemplate the repercussions for the Intelligence Community (IC) and for America
herself. Having been accused of “group
think” and inaccurate assessments that claimed Iraq had weapon’s that have not
been proven to exist, there is a disconnect between passing judgment on those
who provided us with that information and the people who continue to purport
it. Can we be expected to change the IC
in a way that prevents similar mistakes in the future while our country is
involved in such a politically divisive War?
Should we denounce the information gatherers and analyzers without
questioning why our current leaders continue to use unsubstantiated claims to
advocate that their past decisions were correct? To answer both of these questions we have to
do something that most decent people usually try to avoid. We have to delve into politics. Once we do so we will find that the answer to
both questions is: No!
George
Tenet has become the fall guy for a war based off of intelligence that the
Senate has decided was flawed. What is
ironic about this outcome is that two of the three justifications for going
into Iraq
were not positions supported by the CIA, or even the IC as a whole. Lest we forget, the three reasons President
Bush provided the nation to justify the war were: 1. Iraq had Weapons of Mass
Destruction 2. Iraq
and Al-Qaeda were working together 3. The Middle East
would become less of a threat if we democratized Iraq. Although Mr. Tenet did claim that the WMD
issue was a “Slam Dunk”, his agency, along with other parts of the IC
specifically wrote assessments discounting the other two justifications for
war. Mr. Tenet has also been quoted to
say that “We’ve never proven a link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq.” Thus, two-thirds of the arguments used to
convince America
that War was necessary were not the product of IC analysis.
Finding the sources of the claim
still purported by Vice-President Cheney that Iraq and Al-Qaeda were working
together is quite simple. This was the
product of a small group of untrained Pentagon employees who sifted through
thousands of unconfirmed field reports that were later proven to be
incorrect. What these unskilled
assessors failed to take into consideration was that these reports were from
unsubstantiated sources that had no history of providing truthful
information. Many of them were linked to
a Defense Department funded program that paid Achmed Chalabi, yes the same man
we recently had a falling out with in Iraq, over three-hundred thousand
dollars a month for information about Iraq under Saddam. As it turns out, the information provided by
Chalabi and his counterparts was usually fabricated and completely
inaccurate. Even though President Bush
has flip-flopped on this issue by claiming to that there is a link in March of
2003, claiming that there wasn’t a link in January of 2004, and then claiming
again that a link existed in June of 2004 we’re left with the Senate’s report,
which coincides with the report of the Commission investigating the September
11, 2001 terrorist attacks: There was no link.
According to an Army
War College
report published in December 2003 the War in Iraq diverted the US from the War
against Al-Qaeda rather than was a part of it.
Thus, justification #2 is thrown out!
The third
justification for War in Iraq
stems from a movement in International Relations theory called
Neo-Conservatism. The subscribers to
this theory of international relations mix the Realists position of Henry
Kissinger with the Idealistic views of Woodrow Wilson to claim that the United States
should export democracy by the use of force.
The most notable Neo-Conservatives in the administration today are
Vice-President Cheney, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton. I will give these guys credit for trying to
find balance in international relations by taking the extreme of both sides and
putting them together, but what they turned out with in the end is overly
ambitious goals conducted without the requisite political will, which resulted
in the Iraq we have today. Even their
flag bearer for the Neo-Conservative movement The Weekly Standard accuses the administration of taking what they
espouse as a good theory and implementing it poorly. I’ll leave to history whether this
justification for war was flawed or merely the implementation. Either way, I doubt it will take too long for
history to decide the conclusion.
Now that
the justifications for War in Iraq
have been shown the light of day it’s clear to see that the IC was definitely
partly to blame for miscalculations that got us into this mess. This being said, our search for answers
cannot merely stop at the entrance to Langley. We have to address the other factors involved
in our decision to go to war. Based off
of flawed intelligence and a political theory that told us we would bring peace
and stability to the Middle East our Senate
voted to support the War in Iraq. The Senators who were provided the same
information that President Bush had available made a reasoned decision to
support the War. However, unlike the
President and his administration, they did not have a say over how the war was
implemented. With too few troops,
without the support of our strongest allies, and without forethought to the
aftermath of the conflict, we went to War in Iraq unprepared. Voting for a War based off of the
intelligence available is very different than implementing a War poorly.
As the
blame for Iraq is thrown at the Intelligence community it is important to
remember that the CIA, along with other parts of the IC, were left out of the
post-war planning process run by the civilian’s in charge of the Pentagon. Analysts from the intelligence agencies as
well as decorated high ranking military offers who knew the region, had
language and cultural expertise, and even wrote about the possibilities of
post-war turmoil were ignored by this administration at best and shunned at
worst.
Due to the
politics behind the implementation of the War in Iraq we are now stuck with a
decision on how to manage America’s
failings in our very expensive efforts to bring peace to the region. With the cost of over One-Thousand American
deaths, over Four-Thousand American Injuries, greater than Ten-Thousand Iraqi
deaths, untold numbers of Iraqi’s injured, and more than $150 Billion spent so
far we owe it to ourselves, to America as a whole, and to the world to justify
this conflict and make sure mistakes over intelligence and political will like
this never happen again.
Unfortunately,
with an administration which stakes its foreign policy on a doctrine proven
hollow the first time it has been implemented running for reelection, we are
not in a political environment that would allow for a thorough review of the
mistakes made getting into and conducting this War. Anyone advocating a position other than that
of fully supporting the administration and its policies is quickly branded a
traitor. Under such conditions how can
we expect to be able to decide on necessary reforms to the IC, about necessary
changes to our process of going to War, and about the necessary change in our
leadership that will open up the debate to logical rather than emotionally
charged political arguments? We can not
get there from here today. We need a
public debate on these issues that we just cannot have because our political
differences had abrogated our nation’s greater good in the eyes of many
Americans.
We need to
overcome our political attacks upon one another to look at the truth of our
situation. Only then can we understand
the nature of the War we are in, the method by which to defend America from
the threats that are real rather than perceived, and the path we can take to
rebuild our credibility with our own citizens and the rest of the world. Until our politics can get out of the way of
nation’s interests we will be stuck blaming those who cannot defend
themselves. Let’s look at the IC’s
failings while we pan the whole horizon of our politics to realize that George
Tenet was one among many responsible for the position we find ourselves in
today in Iraq. He, and his agency, cannot be left alone to
bear the burden of blame for our nation’s failings abroad.
