Balkinization: Giving New Meaning to the Words "Intelligence Failure"

Giving New Meaning to the Words "Intelligence Failure"

Senator Rockefeller on the consequences of the intelligence failure:

"There is simply no question that mistakes leading up to the war in Iraq rank among the most devastating losses and intelligence failures in the history of the nation," Mr. Rockefeller said. "The fact is that the administration at all levels, and to some extent us, used bad information to bolster its case for war. And we in Congress would not have authorized that war — we would NOT have authorized that war — with 75 votes if we knew what we know now."
The West Virginian went so far as to assert that in some ways the intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq were worse than those that preceded the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "Leading up to Sept. 11, our government didn't connect the dots," he said. "In Iraq, we are even more culpable because the dots themselves never existed."
Mr. Rockefeller went on to challenge one of the Bush administration's basic positions: that the war to topple Mr. Hussein had made the United States, the Middle East and the world safer, notwithstanding the failure so far to find deadly unconventional weapons that the administration had said were a growing danger.
"Tragically, the intelligence failure set forth in this report will affect our national security for generations to come," Mr. Rockefeller said. "Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before."

Do you think anyone will be held to account?

The Senate report focuses only on the CIA's role. It deliberately sidesteps the question whether members of the Administration were in any way to blame for this catastrophe. That section of the report won't be finished until well after the election.

In the meantime, however, I offer one piece of advice, which is probably true on a number of different levels:

When you think intelligence failure, think George W. Bush.

Posted 4:39 PM by JB [link]

Comments:

Should we also construe this indictment of the CIA to be an equally serious indictment of the congressional intelligence oversight committees. Their function, if they have one at all, is not to smugly know the secrets that the rest of us cannot be told. Nor is their job to simply tell us after the fact, that things went terribly wrong for that has long been obvious to everyone. Their constitutional responsibility as a legislative branch is to assure that the executive branch is effectively gathering needed intelligence as that process is occurring. In a failure of this magnitude, should we not ask, where was the oversight?

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Anonymous : 8:36 AM

I think the "slam dunk" incident has been widely (and wildly) misinterpreted because it gets viewed out of context. Bush had already been publicly pushing for the war for months. Bush wasn't uncomfortable with the presentation because he thought "oh, maybe we shouldn't go to war" -- he was uncomfortable because he thought "this isn't going to be enough to sell the war to the public." The decision to attack Iraq had been made years before; Bush was only concerned with selling it. Tenet's slam dunk comment wasn't trying to convince Bush that the presentation was solid (Bush didn't and doesn't care about that -- he wanted to take Iraq) -- Tenet's comment was intended to reassure Bush that the presentation was convincing.

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:16 AM

The Democrats may want to put all blame on the president, but remember that few in Congress, Democrat or Republican, took the time to even read the intelligence information the administration was using. Article. So some blame must fall on the members of Congress, including Senator Rockefeller.

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