Bush, on the CIA's recent bleak assesment of Iraq

[mburbank]

"The CIA laid out several scenarios and said life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better, and they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like."—New York City, Sept. 21, 2004


Yeah, I really don't blame him for not taking this very seriously. I mean, look what happened when he believed them about that whole Weapons of Mass Destruction thing.

Here's my question, though. If they just guess about stuff, why do we pump billions into their budget every year? I mean, hell, I can just guess, and I'd do it for say $42,000 annually.

[glowbelly]

good gracious, is he for real? and and and, whaaat?

what?



i really don't understand.

[Stark]

It all depends on who that particular sound bite is directed at. In this instance it seems like another attempt to cast a doubtful eye on the cia. From their point of view the various intelligence agencies are just accountability buffers.

[FS]

It's kind of disturbing if it's gotten to the point where the Bush administration just dismisses the CIA because it won't play by their rules.

[Preechr]

Originally Posted by mburbank

Yeah, I really don't blame him for not taking this very seriously. I mean, look what happened when he believed them about that whole Weapons of Mass Destruction thing.

Here's my question, though. If they just guess about stuff, why do we pump billions into their budget every year? I mean, hell, I can just guess, and I'd do it for say $42,000 annually.

Y'know, I recently realized just how little I knew about what was becoming to seem to me to be the thing of primary importance in our little foray into the Middle East, so I picked up some books on the CIA. Nothing of any real substance is out yet concerning the intelligence war on terror, so I got a big history lesson, essentially.

Pretty interesting even if a bit tangental. American interest in international intrigue began with the shock of the other recent big attack on our shores: Pearl Harbor. Of potentially great help in WWII, the general idea of fielding spies was still to help us predict future attacks and major events in the world. The CIA was also relied upon heavily for WWIII, the Cold War, however they never got really good at their original purpose: prediction. In fact, their record in that department so far is about 0-(however many big things have happened since 1942.)

The CIA has yet to actually know about anything happening before it actually occurred. The WMD debacle was hardly the first snafu attributed to the CIA, and it won't be the last. I used to think, for some reason alien to me now, that we had a top-rate intelligence system, competing on the same level as the British... which my actual knowledge of is most likely heavily informed by James Bond movies... I still believe that Israel has it going on in that department, and it sort of scares me that they may be the only nation to actually be able to field competent spooks.

I'd have to say I don't feel all that bad about Dubya downplaying that report. It looks like they were asked to produce a report on what might be expected to happen in certain future conditions and they did. I think he's probably got a very realistic expectation of the CIA his dad used to run, it's capabilities and lack thereof. Of course, I'm one of the people that never took the existence of WMD argument as the primary reason for war in Iraq. I think those that now say they only tentatively agreed to war based on intelligence are just being facetious... they never agreed to the war and are just pummelling a straw man. Nobody went to war based solely on WMD intelligence.

[Stark]

[quote="Preechr"]

Originally Posted by mburbank

Nobody went to war based solely on WMD intelligence.

I think that one country did... starts with an a or sumping.

[conus]

I think that one country did... starts with an a or sumping.

No, that was just the stated reason.

[Stark]

Originally Posted by conus

No, that was just the stated reason.

So what do you guys suppose was the general logic behind peoples' support for the war? I want to believe people agreed to war based on wmd threats because if that's not so then my country is full of a bunch of idiotic slaughter monkeys. I have this faint glimmer of hope that a majority of americans truly understand that we've crossed a line. We, the land I hold dear, have attacked another country who posed no threat to us. I don't care how bad Saddam was this is a new precedent and it could lead us down a horrible path. Even if you support Bush what if some crazy liberal emperialist gets into office? He'll be able to attack whoever he wants if he can convince the people that they're threatened.

[Ant10708]

I have a feeling we have attacked a country with absolutely no threat to us before Iraq.

[conus]

I want to believe people agreed to war based on wmd threats because if that's not so then my country is full of a bunch of idiotic slaughter monkeys.

I hate to be the bearer of such bad news, but you do, in fact, live in a country of idiotic slaughter monkeys. Have you watched television recently?

[conus]

Oh. You wanted a reason. I'm sometimes hesitant even to think this because it sounds so insane, but I really believe that the Bush decision to invade Iraq had less to do with ideology or advice than that he simply didn't want to appear ineffectual in the aftermath of 9/11. Because of that, over 20,000 people have died so far.

[ziggytrix]

when Bush asked for "any shred of evidence" linking Saddam to 9/11 he was really askign for "any excuse".

http://www.newamericancentury.org/ has all the details.

[glowbelly]

thank you for posting that link, ziggy. i think that website and the documents on it are some of the most frightening friggin shit i've read in a long, long time.

everybody should read it. seriously. and then look at who wrote it.

[Stark]

Originally Posted by Ant10708

I have a feeling we have attacked a country with absolutely no threat to us before Iraq.

Yes but if you're talking about what I think you are that was mostly us funding other people to fight for us. In any case it's not right now or then. The thing is that this war is a full out invasion and it occurred in the modern world. If you told me this would happen five years ago I wouldn't have believed you, so it can be properly considered as a 'new precedent'.

[mburbank]

W's administration is packed with the folks from his father's administration who though Poppy made a big mistake by not invading Iraq when he had the chance. They all wanted to invade Iraq from the go, not for any national security reason but because they felt they had unfinished business. Like schoolyard bullies he got pulled off a beating, the hung around after school until the got another chance.

The main reason we invaded Iraq was that the Neocons wanted to invade Iraq. Pure and simple. They wanted to flex a little muscle in front of the world, show everybody who the big dog is, and Iraq was always the target. If there'd been no 9/11, W woould have spent his entire presidency trying to engineer a situation in which the county would find it palatable to invade Iraq, and if the country hadn't gone along with him, he'd probably have done it anyway.


The tragedy here is that the war in Iraq pretty much neutered the war on Al Quaeda before we even put troops in Afghanistan. All the Money, all the intelligence work, all the translators were already being held back for Iraq. In fact, we even discouraged other countries from contributing to the reconstruction and drug policing of Afghanistan becuase it would have meant we'd have to help, at least logistically, and we didn't want our transport capacity getting tied up in anything but Iraq.

Afganistan is generating more drug money for Terrorism than when the Taliban was in power. Al Quaeda is still in Afghanistan, and active. Bin Laden is still at large and active. And we're busy in Iraq. HOW is W even running even, let alone getting crushed? It boggles the fucking mind.

[Preechr]

Originally Posted by Stark

So what do you guys suppose was the general logic behind peoples' support for the war? I want to believe people agreed to war based on wmd threats because if that's not so then my country is full of a bunch of idiotic slaughter monkeys. I have this faint glimmer of hope that a majority of americans truly understand that we've crossed a line. We, the land I hold dear, have attacked another country who posed no threat to us. I don't care how bad Saddam was this is a new precedent and it could lead us down a horrible path. Even if you support Bush what if some crazy liberal emperialist gets into office? He'll be able to attack whoever he wants if he can convince the people that they're threatened.

Honestly, I shudder to think of how little the average American would have needed for an excuse to pound another country into the sand at that point in time. I believe the glimmer of hope that you're looking for is somewhere in the falling public approval numbers on the subject of war in Iraq, which is just another emotional response. See, at first we were mad as Hell, and the "case for war" could really have been just a bunch of words spewing from official mouths... well, I suppose that's what we got, huh?

Anyhoo, the American public has moved on to other issues, having largely dealt with the pain and anger of 9/11/1, and generally regrets it's outrage of a couple years back because the retribution it asked for so angrily turned into a much bigger deal than it had thought it would. Yeah, we were told a larger war on terrorism would potentially last a long time, but, like an enraged parent that beats their child only to regret it later, we didn't stop to consider the repercussions of our angry actions.

Now, with all the death in the papers, we've largely begun to feel a bit guilty for unleashing our (already ready and willing) Neo-con attack dogs on Iraq, which is reflected in the polls. Long story short, every American that supported the war in Iraq did so for their own reason, be it anything from WMD threats to just general principles. "Yep, that sounds good enough..." We just aren't very complicated folks for the most part. We are generally one issue voters on political subjects, and this is just one more of those. Just as the majority of voters will vote Dubya in November based on nothing more than he SEEMS to be better for us than Kerry, we largely Ok'd the war because it felt right. There was not a lot of proof needed. There was a lot of debate, and the general consensus was favorable, so we went with it thinking it would all work out for the best whatever happened.

I mean, Saddam was definitely bad, right? The common belief that we'd be greeted by flower throwing, smiling brown folk and be back out of Iraq in a week or two was so easily bought en masse, and the idea of finally DOING something about those damn terrorists for once so attractive, that most of us didn't need a whole lot of convincing. It was the Middle East we blamed for 9/11, and any target in that general area, especially one we'd actually heard of, would do.

Yes, the Neo-con element in American government was Johnny on the Spot with ready-made plans for Democratizing the Middle East, just as the Patriot Act was already written, waiting on a tragedy to get it through Congress. Dubya wanted to appear on the ball and decisive on 9/12, and ready-made plans were pretty attractive. All the administration had to do was make sure the plans drawn up under Clinton, Bush41 and Reagan were still relevant to the present situation and press the Go button. Rumsfeld wasted some time in the run-up reorganizing and second-guessing the military plans, which Bush and Powell utilized "making the case for war" to the UN and the rest of the world.

Before noon on 9/11/1 there were already Special Forces troops in planes headed to Afghanistan and files containing the details on a possible invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and probably a few other places were being pulled from archives in the Pentagon. Secure phone calls were being made to those in the know in Israel and Saudi Arabia because we'd already learned how little we actually knew for sure about the folks that had just attacked us. Because all we had in the way of information at that moment was completely couched in "probablies," the only "known known" right then was that someone was going to pay dearly for the lives and property destroyed on that day.

We can try to assign deeper motivations and levels of complexity to what has happened since the first plane hit the WTC, but all of it is really not much simple than this. Hopefully, everything will still work out for the greater good. Hell, we've made it through three years making major decisions based in nothing more than hope, so why stop now? Has any war ever been fought with prior knowledge of it's outcome? Every life ever taken has been taken with hope that doing so somehow turns out to be the right thing to have done. The decision was only to do something or nothing, and it was an easy one to make. Once we started down the path of doing something, we eventually did the most hopefully effective thing we felt we could hopefully get away with in hopes that whatever we did would discourage future attacks.

[Preechr]

Is CIA at war with Bush?

September 27, 2004

BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

A few hours after George W. Bush dismissed a pessimistic CIA report on Iraq as ''just guessing,'' the analyst who identified himself as its author told a private dinner last week of secret, unheeded warnings years ago about going to war in Iraq. This exchange leads to the unavoidable conclusion that the president of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war with each other.

Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, sat down Tuesday night in a large West Coast city with a select group of private citizens. He was not talking off the cuff. Relying on a multi-paged, single-spaced memorandum, Pillar said he and his colleagues concluded early in the Bush administration that military intervention in Iraq would intensify anti-American hostility throughout Islam. This was not from a CIA retiree but an active senior official. (Pillar, no covert operative, is listed openly in the Federal Staff Directory.)

For President Bush to publicly write off a CIA paper as just guessing is without precedent. For the agency to go semi-public is not only unprecedented but shocking. George Tenet's retirement as director of Central Intelligence removed the buffer between president and agency. As the new DCI, Porter Goss inherits an extraordinarily sensitive situation.

Pillar's Tuesday night presentation was conducted under what used to be called the Lindley Rule (devised by Newsweek's Ernest K. Lindley): The identity of the speaker, to whom he spoke, and the fact that he spoke at all are secret, but the substance of what he said can be reported. This dinner, however, knocks the Lindley Rule on its head. The substance was less significant than the forbidden background details.

The Bush-CIA tension escalated Sept. 15 when the New York Times reported a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was circulated in August (not July, as the newspaper reported), spelling out ''a dark assessment of Iraq'' with civil war as the ''worst case'' outcome. The NIE was prepared by Pillar, and well-placed sources believe Pillar leaked it, though he denied that at Tuesday night's dinner.

The immediate White House reaction to the NIE, from spokesman Scott McClellan, was to associate it with ''pessimists'' and ''hand-wringers.'' With Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi at his side at the United Nations, Bush said of the CIA: ''They were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like.''

A few hours later, Pillar discussed the Iraqi war in a context of increased aversion to the United States -- an attitude he said his East Asia section at the CIA was aware of three years ago and feared would be exacerbated by U.S. military intervention. When Pillar was asked why this was not made clear to the president and other higher authorities, his answer was that nobody asked -- not even Tenet.

The CIA official spokesman said Pillar's West Coast appearance was approved by his ''management team'' at Langley as part of an ongoing ''outreach'' program. However, the spokesman said, Pillar told him that the fact I knew his name meant somebody had violated the off-the-record nature of his remarks. In other words, the CIA bureaucracy wants a license to criticize the president and the former DCI without being held accountable.

Through most of the Bush administration, the CIA high command has been engaged in a bitter struggle with the Pentagon. CIA officials refer to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Undersecretary Douglas Feith as ''ideologues.'' Nevertheless, it is clear the CIA's wrath has now extended to the White House. Bush reduced the tensions a little on Thursday, this time in a joint Washington press conference with Allawi, by saying his use of the word ''guess'' was ''unfortunate.''

Modern history is filled with intelligence bureaus turning against their own governments, for good or ill. In the final days of World War II, the German Abwehr conspired against Hitler. More recently, Pakistani intelligence was plotting with Muslim terrorists. The CIA is a long way from those extremes, but it is supposed to be a resource -- not a critic -- for the president.

[mburbank]

It's hard to know how to read this article without knowing if Novak is acting as the psychophantic butt slave of the administration or the psychophantic butt slave of the CIA.