Saturday, July 10, 2004
CIA Intelligence:
I love all the press recently regarding the great blunders of the CIA in assessing Iraqi capabilities prior to the war. Very interesting the way that they are being held to blame for the current mess. Those who have been following the events closely will get a chuckle from this one. The CIA had in fact stated just the opposite of what they are being credited for. The CIA keeps a great many reports and records. All of which are assessed and forwarded to the White House. Dick Cheney reads those reports, selects the ones which fit into his political agenda and forwards those on to the President. In this case the ones he chose to focus on were reports coming from Iraqi ex-patriots who stated that Saddam had extensive weapons of mass destruction. These Iraqis were highly motivated to have the Americans intervene as they felt that this would lead to the downfall and eventual replacement of Saddam, possibly by those same ex-patriots. This effectively makes any intel. from them highly suspect. Not to worry though, Cheney seized on these reports, created a new department to assess them ( a department filled with anything but experts on the subject), and shot down any contradictory reports coming out of the CIA. Now that the proverbial shit is hitting the fan the White House is focusing on the great blunders within the CIA as the cause of the errant war. The cause of the war rests squarely with Cheney ( Bush does not have the mental capability to do this by himself and likely never understood what was going on). Cheney knew that George W. wanted the war and did his best to ensure that he had the correct reasons for starting one. The CIA even included assessments of the false intel. and suggested that it was highly suspect. Cheney quickly smothered these choice bits of wisdom and the result is the mess we have now. Perhaps politicians should stay at arms length from intel gathering agencies to prevent this type of thing in the future, or at least view all the information and take the advice of those people hired and trained to properly assess it.
I love all the press recently regarding the great blunders of the CIA in assessing Iraqi capabilities prior to the war. Very interesting the way that they are being held to blame for the current mess. Those who have been following the events closely will get a chuckle from this one. The CIA had in fact stated just the opposite of what they are being credited for. The CIA keeps a great many reports and records. All of which are assessed and forwarded to the White House. Dick Cheney reads those reports, selects the ones which fit into his political agenda and forwards those on to the President. In this case the ones he chose to focus on were reports coming from Iraqi ex-patriots who stated that Saddam had extensive weapons of mass destruction. These Iraqis were highly motivated to have the Americans intervene as they felt that this would lead to the downfall and eventual replacement of Saddam, possibly by those same ex-patriots. This effectively makes any intel. from them highly suspect. Not to worry though, Cheney seized on these reports, created a new department to assess them ( a department filled with anything but experts on the subject), and shot down any contradictory reports coming out of the CIA. Now that the proverbial shit is hitting the fan the White House is focusing on the great blunders within the CIA as the cause of the errant war. The cause of the war rests squarely with Cheney ( Bush does not have the mental capability to do this by himself and likely never understood what was going on). Cheney knew that George W. wanted the war and did his best to ensure that he had the correct reasons for starting one. The CIA even included assessments of the false intel. and suggested that it was highly suspect. Cheney quickly smothered these choice bits of wisdom and the result is the mess we have now. Perhaps politicians should stay at arms length from intel gathering agencies to prevent this type of thing in the future, or at least view all the information and take the advice of those people hired and trained to properly assess it.
# posted by Wil Smith : 8:05 a.m.
