The so-called anti-war left (Can 60-70% of U.S. citizens really be called "the left"? If only that were true!) are falling into a trap set by the White House. By using one of the oldest tricks in the book of political trickery Bush has managed, for the moment at least, to divide but hopefully not conquer the Democrats. The majority of Americans want the U.S. out of Iraq and right now the Democrats are leading the effort against the President who for whatever reason doesn't seem to be in any hurry to end the war. By vetoing legislation that would end the war sooner in favor of his own that does little but continue the war funding he has effectively turned every American who wants the fighting to stop against the very group who is trying to do just that.
I admit I couldn't believe it when I heard that the Democrats were sending Bush legislation that gave in to his demands. It took me a while to really comprehend what was happening and obviously I wasn't alone. But I slowly realized that as Jonathan Alter said (on Keith Olbermann, I think) the "Democrats disagree over tactics but not the goal" and that "capitulation was unavoidable".
I think the Democrats who voted for bill probably felt that they were better off choosing to fight the battles they had a chance of winning and it was clear they weren't going to win this one. There isn't much hope of forcing Bush to sign a bill that included timelines because:
1) He doesn't want to be seen as giving into the Democrats
2) He wants to keep his options open
3) He wants to divide the Democrats so they will be less effective in ganging up on him.
Agreeing to include a timeline in a bill, even one that was nonbinding would put him in the position of having to answer to the Congress and the media. The press would criticize him now and say he caved into the Democrats just like they are now criticizing the Democrats for caving into Bush. And if, when the time came, the conditions of the deadline were met by the Iraqis and our military, Bush would be in the awkward position of having to either pullout and be seen as doing the bidding of the Democrats or if, as many people believe he wants to stay in Iraq indefinitely, be criticized for not leaving.
However, Bush has realized that while he can avoid caving into the Democrats, he has to at least pretend to give into the polls and public opinion. He did agree to the inclusion of nonbinding benchmarks in the recent legislation; General Petraeus has an unofficial deadline (see April 24, 2007 post ) of September 2007, and now word has it that the White House is preparing a plan, another Plan B, that includes a 50% troop reduction in 2008. And the president in his news conference on Thursday, 05/24/07, admitted that he was implementing some of the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton (Iran Study Group) report.
By not being beholden to the Democrats and implementing his own plan he can keep his options open but still claim to be following a new direction. He can claim that he's leaving it up to the generals so they won't be at the mercy of a micro-managing Congress. And it's possible, though I have no proof, there was some back room dealing with Republicans who told him that they wouldn't vote with Democrats this time if the he eased up a bit on his hard line war stance and implemented at least part of the Baker Hamilton report.
In addition, Bush doesn't want Democrats to get credit for anything. He's hedging his bets: when pulling out looks like a good thing politically as it does now he wants to be seen as the one engineering the pullout not the Democrats. If and when the pullout looks like a bad thing -- like maybe if the surge is actually successful (which is possible with Petraeus who is very smart and unlike a lot of generals seems to be actually able to translate strategy into a tactical reality that works) he wants to be able to take credit for that as well. This is the way of all successful managers -- to try to take credit for whatever is successful whether it was their idea or not. That's one way the ruthless gain and remain in power.
Bush is trying to make Democrats look bad anyway he can think of. By giving in to them he would be relinquishing to them a certain amount of his own power. By implementing or at least appearing to implement some of the Baker-Hamilton plan it makes him look like he really is, despite criticism to the contrary, willing to compromise and at the same time allows him to criticize the efforts of the Democratic led Congress to end the war.
According to the Washington Post 05/27/07: "Another Senate war bill, expected to be introduced early next month, would adopt the Iraq Study Group recommendations as official policy.... The legislation, which has gained bipartisan backing, would establish conditions for a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq and require specific steps to be taken by the Iraqi government. The list is similar to the benchmarks in the funding bill, but more detailed in its requirements." And in September, Republicans will be re-evaluating their positions on the war when General Petraeus gives his progress report on the Surge. So the Congress will have more opportunities to outwit Bush but it obviously isn't going to be easy without the votes in the Senate to override his veto.
However there is an interesting opinion piece by Larry C. Johnson , Who's On First in Iraq - The Real Plan?, posted 05/24/07 on the Atlantic Free Press website where he discusses two different White House plans for Iraq that were reported on by the Washington Post. Possible infighting in the White House? One can only hope.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Bush's Winds of War
Today in his remarks at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy commencement President Bush conveniently revealed unclassified material regarding al Qaeda that he believes justifies the continued war and bolsters his position on Iraq. The U.S. Military also today released drawings (repeat drawings not photos) that were allegedly found on a computer at an al Qaeda safe house in or near Baghdad that depict various gruesome torture techniques. It would seem the Bush Administration is stepping up its anti-terrorist rhetoric to support its position on the war and its no-compromise attitude toward any troop funding legislation.
However al Qaeda is just one aspect of the problem in Iraq. It is irrational to justify the war based on the activities of actual terrorists like al Qaeda when the major problem in Iraq is the conflict between Sunni and Shi'a who are each engaged in a struggle to make sure that they are not forced into oppressive rule by the other. This violent situation is occurring largely because of our actions after we invaded their country and took over their government.
It has now been recognized by most Democrats and many Republican that debaathification and the disbanding of the army , two actions taken by J. Paul Bremer soon after the official end of the war, added to the chaos and violence that helped create the current conflict in Iraq. Debaathification resulted in the government being essentially dismantled because most civil servants including teachers were members of the Baath Party as a requirement of their jobs not because the were necessarily loyal to Saddam. The disbanding of the military especially without the confiscation weapons, resulted in thousands of armed, able young men being let loose, without jobs and with little possibility of employment which from a security and law enforcement standpoint would be a dangerous situation anywhere in the world. While al Qaeda has become increasingly active in Iraq after we invaded they were not active before; the lack of government, social structure and security that came about after we took over the country allowed al Qaeda to gain a foothold in Iraq.
Bush's remarks today at the United States Coast Guard Academy included the following: "In Iraq, we removed a cruel dictator who harbored terrorists, paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, invaded his neighbors, defied the United Nations Security Council, pursued and used weapons of mass destruction." There is no proof that Saddam harbored any terrorists even though Bush has long suggested that Saddam allowed members of al Qaeda to enter Iraq. Saddam did pay families of Palestinian suicide bombers and he did invade Kuwait.
And while Saddam may have on occasion defied the United Nations, the United States itself while not explicitly defying, circumvented the wishes of the U.N. by not seeking a U.N. Security Council vote before invading Iraq. Saddam was being truthful when prior to the Iraq War he told the U.N. that he had complied with their order that he disarm -- we have found no WMD despite the Bush Admin insistence that he had not at the time gotten rid of the weapons. It was the U.S. who came up with questionable evidence, presented by to the U.N. by Colin Powell, that Saddam had not complied. And it was the U.S. who along with Britain didn't seek the approval of the U.N. Security Council before going to war because they knew they would not vote in their favor. In September 2004, then U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan said that the war "was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."
What I find most disturbing about the President's rhetoric is that it is almost impossible to determine who and what is a real threat and what threats he is exaggerating or distorting for political effect. He or his representatives have on recent occasions accused Democrats of political theater regarding their opposition to funding the war without accountability and to their inquiry into the U.S. Attorney firings by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. However, the Democrat's political theater is an attempt to bring much needed accountability to the Bush administration while Bush's political theater is about instilling fear with vague threats and not about realistically informing the American people regarding the real world threat from al Qaeda: "Here in America, we're living in the eye of a storm. All around us, dangerous winds are swirling, and these winds could reach our shores at any moment."
By not realistically addressing the terrorist threat he endangers the U.S. even more than actual terrorist could ever hope to: by spending billions of dollar unnecessarily but even worse, by sacrificing the lives of thousands of U.S. troops and by disabling 10's of thousands of others. Not to mention the deaths of possibly 100's of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
It was also announced today that Gen. Petraeus is attempting to implement a new plan of action in Iraq which includes negotiating cease fire plans with those factions which were willing to do so. This is a reasonable plan if it is not too late for it to be implemented. If we manage to quell the violence between the Sunni and Shi'a factions in Iraq -- who are not terrorists but are for the most part legitimate residents of Iraq fighting a civil war -- we can then possibly focus on al Qaeda who have become a strong presence, especially in Diyala, and are a threat to both Sunnis and Shia's as well as to the rest of the Middle East.
However al Qaeda is just one aspect of the problem in Iraq. It is irrational to justify the war based on the activities of actual terrorists like al Qaeda when the major problem in Iraq is the conflict between Sunni and Shi'a who are each engaged in a struggle to make sure that they are not forced into oppressive rule by the other. This violent situation is occurring largely because of our actions after we invaded their country and took over their government.
It has now been recognized by most Democrats and many Republican that debaathification and the disbanding of the army , two actions taken by J. Paul Bremer soon after the official end of the war, added to the chaos and violence that helped create the current conflict in Iraq. Debaathification resulted in the government being essentially dismantled because most civil servants including teachers were members of the Baath Party as a requirement of their jobs not because the were necessarily loyal to Saddam. The disbanding of the military especially without the confiscation weapons, resulted in thousands of armed, able young men being let loose, without jobs and with little possibility of employment which from a security and law enforcement standpoint would be a dangerous situation anywhere in the world. While al Qaeda has become increasingly active in Iraq after we invaded they were not active before; the lack of government, social structure and security that came about after we took over the country allowed al Qaeda to gain a foothold in Iraq.
Bush's remarks today at the United States Coast Guard Academy included the following: "In Iraq, we removed a cruel dictator who harbored terrorists, paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, invaded his neighbors, defied the United Nations Security Council, pursued and used weapons of mass destruction." There is no proof that Saddam harbored any terrorists even though Bush has long suggested that Saddam allowed members of al Qaeda to enter Iraq. Saddam did pay families of Palestinian suicide bombers and he did invade Kuwait.
And while Saddam may have on occasion defied the United Nations, the United States itself while not explicitly defying, circumvented the wishes of the U.N. by not seeking a U.N. Security Council vote before invading Iraq. Saddam was being truthful when prior to the Iraq War he told the U.N. that he had complied with their order that he disarm -- we have found no WMD despite the Bush Admin insistence that he had not at the time gotten rid of the weapons. It was the U.S. who came up with questionable evidence, presented by to the U.N. by Colin Powell, that Saddam had not complied. And it was the U.S. who along with Britain didn't seek the approval of the U.N. Security Council before going to war because they knew they would not vote in their favor. In September 2004, then U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan said that the war "was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."
What I find most disturbing about the President's rhetoric is that it is almost impossible to determine who and what is a real threat and what threats he is exaggerating or distorting for political effect. He or his representatives have on recent occasions accused Democrats of political theater regarding their opposition to funding the war without accountability and to their inquiry into the U.S. Attorney firings by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. However, the Democrat's political theater is an attempt to bring much needed accountability to the Bush administration while Bush's political theater is about instilling fear with vague threats and not about realistically informing the American people regarding the real world threat from al Qaeda: "Here in America, we're living in the eye of a storm. All around us, dangerous winds are swirling, and these winds could reach our shores at any moment."
By not realistically addressing the terrorist threat he endangers the U.S. even more than actual terrorist could ever hope to: by spending billions of dollar unnecessarily but even worse, by sacrificing the lives of thousands of U.S. troops and by disabling 10's of thousands of others. Not to mention the deaths of possibly 100's of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
It was also announced today that Gen. Petraeus is attempting to implement a new plan of action in Iraq which includes negotiating cease fire plans with those factions which were willing to do so. This is a reasonable plan if it is not too late for it to be implemented. If we manage to quell the violence between the Sunni and Shi'a factions in Iraq -- who are not terrorists but are for the most part legitimate residents of Iraq fighting a civil war -- we can then possibly focus on al Qaeda who have become a strong presence, especially in Diyala, and are a threat to both Sunnis and Shia's as well as to the rest of the Middle East.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Cheney's Conspiracy Theory
While numerous bloggers have mentioned or written about Cheney's paranoia the mainstream press seems to have only hinted at it. I assume, in part, that the press is reluctant to portray the man who until recently has been seen to be the one actually running the country as someone whose conservative outlook is closer to the film Dr. Strangelove than it is to the worldview of Ronald Reagan.
Some bloggers and also a few journalists, pundits, radio show hosts, etc. have suggested that Cheney's move towards the "darkside" is the result of brain damage caused by heart disease and hardening of the arteries. Others have suggested the influence of Lynne Cheney. While I can't really speculate too much about the affect of heart disease on his thinking I can come up with a few thoughts about Lynne Cheney who happens to be a senior fellow at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute. Since 9/11 she has written articles, speeches and books stressing the importance of our freedom and liberty and how difficult it was for our forefathers to establish freedom and how difficult it has been to keep. The unstated implication being that our liberty and freedom is under some kind of threat from some unnamed foe. This ambiguity is convenient because the reader is forced to supply their own enemy and it could be anyone from Osama bin Laden to the their next door neighbor. She is encouraging paranoia by suggesting the enemies of freedom and liberty could be anywhere and everywhere. Dick Cheney's insistence that we all be subject to possible surveillance, that members of anti-war groups be put on the no-fly lists and other over-the-top security measures are a reflection of his fear/paranoia that the enemy could be any of us.
In her book Telling The Truth: Why Our Culture and Our Country Have Stopped Making Sense--and What We Can Do About It (1996) Lynne Cheney attempted to write a scholarly treatise decrying political correctness and how some people's sense of truth is overly influenced by their political and cultural beliefs. She uses the philosophical concept of relativism to give her biased arguments an intellectual believability. However, she doesn't seem to get that her own beliefs are influenced by her own political and cultural beliefs. As a result, her underlying assumption is that her truth is better and more objective than the truth of anyone who doesn't agree with her. She grants herself the moral authority that history has revealed to be a very dangerous thing that has been used to justify many crusades past and present. Dick Cheney's desire to spread U.S.-style democracy to the world whether they want it or not is really just such a crusade.
Dick Cheney shares her sense of moral authority and exhibits the same trait of believing that he knows what is best and everyone who disagrees with him is somehow wrong. And ironically for someone who's wife wrote a book called Telling the Truth Cheney finds it very easy to tell his own version of truth and to on occasion lie when it suits his purposes. He seems to believe that truth is relative in the sense that it is whatever is convenient for him at the moment. The end justifies the means kind of truth. It's like he believes in his moral authority to such an extent that he believes he is above the truth and is therefore justified in telling lies that the average person would never have the nerve to try to get away with.
There has been quite a bit of blogging and book writing regarding 9/11 conspiracy theories which speculate that the U.S. government had a hand in the attacks but not so much regarding the conspiracy theory that Dick Cheney believes in -- that Saddam was in league with bin Laden. I think his fear/paranoia that Saddam and bin Laden were in cahoots and conspiring together to perpetrate an attack worse than 9/11 led him to, among other actions, throw out the Geneva Conventions and some of our civil liberties in hopes of acquiring intel to stop them.
The left has assumed that Cheney deliberately faked evidence of the conspiracy to justify the invasion of Iraq, however Laurie Mylroie, as reported in the great book Hubris , is a former Harvard instructor who provided the neo-cons with a lot of the misinformation, which she believed to be true, that they used to backup their theory that Saddam was a menace to the world. She writes in her book Bush vs. the Beltway that Mohammed Atta had visited Prague at least once to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent. This alleged meeting which the CIA now says never took place, was the primary bit of evidence that the Bush Administration used to prove that there was connection between Saddam and al Qaeda. She also hints at the possibility that the Anthrax letters sent in the weeks after 9/11 could have been the result of cooperation between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
I think that Cheney fell hard for the arguments of Mylroie and put together his own shadow intelligence unit at the Pentagon to look over raw intelligence in hopes of proving these theories. Instead of listening to intelligence experts, who he may lost faith in because of their failing to stop 9/11, he decided that the worst case scenario presented by Mylroie was more plausible. And as George Tenet [see May 7 post] has recently said, they were acting on the possibility that Saddam might have WMD not the imminent certainty that he had them. Ron Suskind also wrote in The One Percent Doctrine that Cheney was operating on the theory that if there was even a 1% chance that Saddam had WMD they should proceed as if he actually had them.
It's not hard to understand Cheney's abundance of caution when it came to wanting to make sure there wasn't another 9/11 attack but clearly he lost his perspective and to some extent I really believe his fear became paranoia. This fear/paranoia plus his sense of moral authority led him to believe that he knew better than the U.N. and many of our friends and allies around the world who did not think a war in Iraq was warranted or necessary.
Links
A Face Only a President Could Love
[Cheney Interview]
Todd Purdum June 2006
Protecting our Precious Liberty"
and other writings by Lynne Cheney
The Democrats' Worldview
by Ivo Daalder
A Democratic Foreign Policy?
by G. John Ikenberry
The Spies Who Pushed for War
by Julian Borger
Letter to President Clinton (1998)
from the Project for the New American Century
Some bloggers and also a few journalists, pundits, radio show hosts, etc. have suggested that Cheney's move towards the "darkside" is the result of brain damage caused by heart disease and hardening of the arteries. Others have suggested the influence of Lynne Cheney. While I can't really speculate too much about the affect of heart disease on his thinking I can come up with a few thoughts about Lynne Cheney who happens to be a senior fellow at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute. Since 9/11 she has written articles, speeches and books stressing the importance of our freedom and liberty and how difficult it was for our forefathers to establish freedom and how difficult it has been to keep. The unstated implication being that our liberty and freedom is under some kind of threat from some unnamed foe. This ambiguity is convenient because the reader is forced to supply their own enemy and it could be anyone from Osama bin Laden to the their next door neighbor. She is encouraging paranoia by suggesting the enemies of freedom and liberty could be anywhere and everywhere. Dick Cheney's insistence that we all be subject to possible surveillance, that members of anti-war groups be put on the no-fly lists and other over-the-top security measures are a reflection of his fear/paranoia that the enemy could be any of us.
In her book Telling The Truth: Why Our Culture and Our Country Have Stopped Making Sense--and What We Can Do About It (1996) Lynne Cheney attempted to write a scholarly treatise decrying political correctness and how some people's sense of truth is overly influenced by their political and cultural beliefs. She uses the philosophical concept of relativism to give her biased arguments an intellectual believability. However, she doesn't seem to get that her own beliefs are influenced by her own political and cultural beliefs. As a result, her underlying assumption is that her truth is better and more objective than the truth of anyone who doesn't agree with her. She grants herself the moral authority that history has revealed to be a very dangerous thing that has been used to justify many crusades past and present. Dick Cheney's desire to spread U.S.-style democracy to the world whether they want it or not is really just such a crusade.
Dick Cheney shares her sense of moral authority and exhibits the same trait of believing that he knows what is best and everyone who disagrees with him is somehow wrong. And ironically for someone who's wife wrote a book called Telling the Truth Cheney finds it very easy to tell his own version of truth and to on occasion lie when it suits his purposes. He seems to believe that truth is relative in the sense that it is whatever is convenient for him at the moment. The end justifies the means kind of truth. It's like he believes in his moral authority to such an extent that he believes he is above the truth and is therefore justified in telling lies that the average person would never have the nerve to try to get away with.
There has been quite a bit of blogging and book writing regarding 9/11 conspiracy theories which speculate that the U.S. government had a hand in the attacks but not so much regarding the conspiracy theory that Dick Cheney believes in -- that Saddam was in league with bin Laden. I think his fear/paranoia that Saddam and bin Laden were in cahoots and conspiring together to perpetrate an attack worse than 9/11 led him to, among other actions, throw out the Geneva Conventions and some of our civil liberties in hopes of acquiring intel to stop them.
The left has assumed that Cheney deliberately faked evidence of the conspiracy to justify the invasion of Iraq, however Laurie Mylroie, as reported in the great book Hubris , is a former Harvard instructor who provided the neo-cons with a lot of the misinformation, which she believed to be true, that they used to backup their theory that Saddam was a menace to the world. She writes in her book Bush vs. the Beltway that Mohammed Atta had visited Prague at least once to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent. This alleged meeting which the CIA now says never took place, was the primary bit of evidence that the Bush Administration used to prove that there was connection between Saddam and al Qaeda. She also hints at the possibility that the Anthrax letters sent in the weeks after 9/11 could have been the result of cooperation between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
I think that Cheney fell hard for the arguments of Mylroie and put together his own shadow intelligence unit at the Pentagon to look over raw intelligence in hopes of proving these theories. Instead of listening to intelligence experts, who he may lost faith in because of their failing to stop 9/11, he decided that the worst case scenario presented by Mylroie was more plausible. And as George Tenet [see May 7 post] has recently said, they were acting on the possibility that Saddam might have WMD not the imminent certainty that he had them. Ron Suskind also wrote in The One Percent Doctrine that Cheney was operating on the theory that if there was even a 1% chance that Saddam had WMD they should proceed as if he actually had them.
It's not hard to understand Cheney's abundance of caution when it came to wanting to make sure there wasn't another 9/11 attack but clearly he lost his perspective and to some extent I really believe his fear became paranoia. This fear/paranoia plus his sense of moral authority led him to believe that he knew better than the U.N. and many of our friends and allies around the world who did not think a war in Iraq was warranted or necessary.
Links
A Face Only a President Could Love
[Cheney Interview]
Todd Purdum June 2006
Protecting our Precious Liberty"
and other writings by Lynne Cheney
The Democrats' Worldview
by Ivo Daalder
A Democratic Foreign Policy?
by G. John Ikenberry
The Spies Who Pushed for War
by Julian Borger
Letter to President Clinton (1998)
from the Project for the New American Century
Monday, May 7, 2007
Tenet: "...history, deception, denial..."
"The job of the director of Central Intelligence is to provide data, not to make policy.... The notion... that we didn't speak truth to power, didn't tell people what we believed in the confines of government.... Look, I was the director of Central Intelligence. My job is to do the best I can to give people the best data possible. Policymakers make their decisions. I know that we acquitted our responsibilities consistent with our values. "
Interview with Wolf Blitzer, CNN 05/02/07
This excuse sounds rather close to "I was just following orders". (I'm not going to discuss his audacity at using the "speaking truth to power" phrase, which sounds like an attempt to appear somehow as David to the Bush Administration Goliath.) As a career administrator Tenet's first impulse was apparently to go along to get along and to do his best to serve his bosses -- that is generally how you get promoted in a bureaucracy. However, he must have been aware that evidence was being skewed and intelligence cherry-picked by Cheney's Pentagon's shadow intel unit which was largely responsible for the October 2002 NIE that didn't exactly make a strong case for going to war with Iraq even though it conveniently left out a lot of intel that called into doubt Saddam's possession of WMD and his ability to make them. The Congressional Democrats had requested the NIE so that they would have more information regarding how much of a threat Saddam actually posed. Based on this NIE the Congress passed the still controversial AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002 which Bush used to legitimize going to war against Iraq.
Did Tenet have a moral responsibility to go public with the fact that perhaps the information in the NIE that made a case against Saddam wasn't exactly truthful? Well, he says he spoke "truth to power" but it wasn't up to him to make the decision to go to war; yet in another answer it seems that he is justifying the decision by saying it wasn't the imminent threat of Saddam it was more the possibility that Saddam might have WMD that justified the war: "Well, as I said at Georgetown in 2004, not imminent, but surprise... the question that policymakers grappled with -- would he surprise us in a way that limited our ability to respond? " Interview with Wolf Blitzer, CNN 05/02/07
He wants it both ways: he wants to portray himself as having no part of the decision to go to war -- he was just providing the intelligence but not making the policy -- but yet he is also providing a rationale for why the decision was made as if he was involved in the decision making process.
"[W]e followed Iraq's weapons programs for 10 years. I had followed them in the Clinton administration and in the Bush administration. Our analysts wrote what we believed. We made our best judgments. We made our best assessments. We turned out to be wrong for many reasons that go to the heart of our tradecraft. It's no solace that every other country in the world believed it, as well. " Interview with Wolf Blitzer, CNN 05/02/07
When Tenet sat behind Colin Powell in February 2003, at the U.N. General Assembly, when Powell presented the Bush's Administration case for the Iraq War he had to have known that the intelligence had been doctored to support the administration's position. (He had to have been suspicious of the mobile labs that had no documentation except the word of the questionable source named "Curveball", not to mention the infamous aluminum tubes that NIE claimed had a dual purpose one of which was to construct a nuclear centrifuge when in fact they only had one purpose which was for short-range missiles.) He believed "policymakers" thought that Saddam wasn't necessarily an imminent threat but there was a fear that they didn't know what Saddam had in terms of WMD or what he could do with them. Saddam's history of, as he put it: "history, deception, denial" made him and others fear that he might have the ability to mount some kind of monumental surprise attack against the U.S. despite his claim of having no such capability. It's possible that Tenet actually believed this at the time, but even so, it didn't warrant the skewing of intelligence and using it to mislead people. Using bad intelligence, even if it's intelligence that you know is bad and believe that you are using to justify a good cause is a very risky proposition, a gamble. Going to war against Saddam without solid evidence but only a fear that Saddam might WMD was tantamount to gambling with the lives of U.S. troops and innocent Iraqis.
Most of us have been in situations where we have to guesstimate because we don't have enough information to make an informed decision but we have to make a decision anyway. We have to take the risk. And usually after we make such a decision we monitor the outcome closely so that if it turns out to have been the wrong decision we can hopefully fix it so that we don't have a complete disaster on our hands. There is another way to deal with such a situation, especially in a bureaucracy: once you realize you have made a decision that really hasn't had the outcome you had hoped for you distance yourself from the bad outcome as much as possible and hope that you can find someone else to blame for it. I think the disaster in Iraq is an example of a guesstimate gone wrong and those responsible are now doing their best to avoid responsibility.
Tenet's argument that everyone else in the world thought Saddam had WMD was interestingly enough recently echoed by both Condalezza Rice and Tony Snow. They seem to be laying a foundation for a possible excuse for the Bush administration role in Iraq or maybe they just think that if they appear to be agreeing with Tenet on this issue it takes the sting out of his other accusations against them.
On 04/29/07 Condalezza Rice told Wolf Blitzer: "To the degree that there was an intelligence problem here, it was not just an intelligence problem with George Tenet. It was not just an intelligence problem with U.S. intelligence. It was an intelligence problem worldwide. We all thought -- including U.N. inspectors -- that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. So there's no blame here of anyone. "
And Tony Snow being interviewed by John Roberts on American Morning, CNN, 04/20/07 : "[T]here doesn't seem to be any dispute about the fact that the best intelligence available to the United States, to the intelligence committees on Capitol Hill, to intelligence services around the world, was that Saddam had some weapons of mass destruction and was pursuing further weapons of mass destruction.... The fact is, the best intelligence we had indicated weapons of mass destruction...."
But unfortunately this excuse isn't exactly true either. The world wasn't convinced that Saddam had WMD and that's why the Bush Administration had Colin Powell present their case before the U.N. General Assembly in 2003 in hopes of convincing at least the voting members that a war against Iraq was a better option than more inspections and continued sanctions. The evidence he presented wasn't convincing enough to get a voting majority to support the U.S. resolution for the use of force in Iraq and ultimately it was withdrawn. In March 2003 the U.S. invaded Iraq without U.N. approval and with very limited support from the international community. (Remember "freedom fries" and the general denunciation of anything French because France decided not to support the U.S. in the Iraq War?). I suppose it is possible that the members of the entire international intelligence community believed that Saddam had WMD and the will to use them but, unlike the Bush Administration, the policymakers of their respective countries weren't convinced that the threat he posed warranted an invasion and war.
Interview with Wolf Blitzer, CNN 05/02/07
This excuse sounds rather close to "I was just following orders". (I'm not going to discuss his audacity at using the "speaking truth to power" phrase, which sounds like an attempt to appear somehow as David to the Bush Administration Goliath.) As a career administrator Tenet's first impulse was apparently to go along to get along and to do his best to serve his bosses -- that is generally how you get promoted in a bureaucracy. However, he must have been aware that evidence was being skewed and intelligence cherry-picked by Cheney's Pentagon's shadow intel unit which was largely responsible for the October 2002 NIE that didn't exactly make a strong case for going to war with Iraq even though it conveniently left out a lot of intel that called into doubt Saddam's possession of WMD and his ability to make them. The Congressional Democrats had requested the NIE so that they would have more information regarding how much of a threat Saddam actually posed. Based on this NIE the Congress passed the still controversial AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002 which Bush used to legitimize going to war against Iraq.
Did Tenet have a moral responsibility to go public with the fact that perhaps the information in the NIE that made a case against Saddam wasn't exactly truthful? Well, he says he spoke "truth to power" but it wasn't up to him to make the decision to go to war; yet in another answer it seems that he is justifying the decision by saying it wasn't the imminent threat of Saddam it was more the possibility that Saddam might have WMD that justified the war: "Well, as I said at Georgetown in 2004, not imminent, but surprise... the question that policymakers grappled with -- would he surprise us in a way that limited our ability to respond? " Interview with Wolf Blitzer, CNN 05/02/07
He wants it both ways: he wants to portray himself as having no part of the decision to go to war -- he was just providing the intelligence but not making the policy -- but yet he is also providing a rationale for why the decision was made as if he was involved in the decision making process.
"[W]e followed Iraq's weapons programs for 10 years. I had followed them in the Clinton administration and in the Bush administration. Our analysts wrote what we believed. We made our best judgments. We made our best assessments. We turned out to be wrong for many reasons that go to the heart of our tradecraft. It's no solace that every other country in the world believed it, as well. " Interview with Wolf Blitzer, CNN 05/02/07
When Tenet sat behind Colin Powell in February 2003, at the U.N. General Assembly, when Powell presented the Bush's Administration case for the Iraq War he had to have known that the intelligence had been doctored to support the administration's position. (He had to have been suspicious of the mobile labs that had no documentation except the word of the questionable source named "Curveball", not to mention the infamous aluminum tubes that NIE claimed had a dual purpose one of which was to construct a nuclear centrifuge when in fact they only had one purpose which was for short-range missiles.) He believed "policymakers" thought that Saddam wasn't necessarily an imminent threat but there was a fear that they didn't know what Saddam had in terms of WMD or what he could do with them. Saddam's history of, as he put it: "history, deception, denial" made him and others fear that he might have the ability to mount some kind of monumental surprise attack against the U.S. despite his claim of having no such capability. It's possible that Tenet actually believed this at the time, but even so, it didn't warrant the skewing of intelligence and using it to mislead people. Using bad intelligence, even if it's intelligence that you know is bad and believe that you are using to justify a good cause is a very risky proposition, a gamble. Going to war against Saddam without solid evidence but only a fear that Saddam might WMD was tantamount to gambling with the lives of U.S. troops and innocent Iraqis.
Most of us have been in situations where we have to guesstimate because we don't have enough information to make an informed decision but we have to make a decision anyway. We have to take the risk. And usually after we make such a decision we monitor the outcome closely so that if it turns out to have been the wrong decision we can hopefully fix it so that we don't have a complete disaster on our hands. There is another way to deal with such a situation, especially in a bureaucracy: once you realize you have made a decision that really hasn't had the outcome you had hoped for you distance yourself from the bad outcome as much as possible and hope that you can find someone else to blame for it. I think the disaster in Iraq is an example of a guesstimate gone wrong and those responsible are now doing their best to avoid responsibility.
Tenet's argument that everyone else in the world thought Saddam had WMD was interestingly enough recently echoed by both Condalezza Rice and Tony Snow. They seem to be laying a foundation for a possible excuse for the Bush administration role in Iraq or maybe they just think that if they appear to be agreeing with Tenet on this issue it takes the sting out of his other accusations against them.
On 04/29/07 Condalezza Rice told Wolf Blitzer: "To the degree that there was an intelligence problem here, it was not just an intelligence problem with George Tenet. It was not just an intelligence problem with U.S. intelligence. It was an intelligence problem worldwide. We all thought -- including U.N. inspectors -- that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. So there's no blame here of anyone. "
And Tony Snow being interviewed by John Roberts on American Morning, CNN, 04/20/07 : "[T]here doesn't seem to be any dispute about the fact that the best intelligence available to the United States, to the intelligence committees on Capitol Hill, to intelligence services around the world, was that Saddam had some weapons of mass destruction and was pursuing further weapons of mass destruction.... The fact is, the best intelligence we had indicated weapons of mass destruction...."
But unfortunately this excuse isn't exactly true either. The world wasn't convinced that Saddam had WMD and that's why the Bush Administration had Colin Powell present their case before the U.N. General Assembly in 2003 in hopes of convincing at least the voting members that a war against Iraq was a better option than more inspections and continued sanctions. The evidence he presented wasn't convincing enough to get a voting majority to support the U.S. resolution for the use of force in Iraq and ultimately it was withdrawn. In March 2003 the U.S. invaded Iraq without U.N. approval and with very limited support from the international community. (Remember "freedom fries" and the general denunciation of anything French because France decided not to support the U.S. in the Iraq War?). I suppose it is possible that the members of the entire international intelligence community believed that Saddam had WMD and the will to use them but, unlike the Bush Administration, the policymakers of their respective countries weren't convinced that the threat he posed warranted an invasion and war.
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