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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (562495)	4/9/2004 3:17:48 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

An Intel Examination The Houston Chronicle The establishment of "independent bipartisan commission" to review U.S.telligence gathering on Iraq, handled in the old Washing lay-blame model, will lead us exactly the wrong direction. On the other hand, the right commission with the right mission would provide a tremendous opportunity to create an intelligence capability to meet the challenges of the 21st century. First, let me describe what America does not need and that is a narrowly focused commission that examines only the question of American intelligence on prewar Iraq. Nor does America need a backward oriented commission that only seeks to find fault. America certainly does not need one more cycle of politicians undermining, second-guessing and demoralizing the intelligence professionals who risk their lives and their careers rendering judgement about threats from secret dictatorships with inadequate information because of inadequate resources. The weakening of the intelligence community began in the mid-1970s with the Church Com mittee and was compounded by the Carter administration's dismantling of our human intelligence capability - as Ambassador David Kay noted in his recent testimony. It was then further diluted by the Clinton administration's starving the intelligence community of resources. The question should not be why the intelligence agencies failed the government, but why the gov- ernment continues to fail the agencies by not providing the resources necessary to protect our country in a dangerous world. We cannot expect the intelligence agencies to operate in the age of biological and chemical weapons of mass murder and nuclear weapons of mass destruction with the resources of the last century. The answer is not subjecting intelligence professionals to lectures by the very politicians who systematically cut their funding and thus limiting their capabilities and capacity for solid human intelligence, while entrenching more congressional oversight that will only encourage the cycle of periodic scapegoating and not lead to serious reform or improvement. Conversely, we have a tremen dous opportunity for the commis sion appointed by the president to conduct a thorough review of the new, harder and more complex 21st-century worldwide intelli gence challenges that have be come bvious since Sept. 11. A commission on 21st-century American intelligence could be aimed at strengthening the intelli gence community rather than undermining it by seeking to understand and meet the global challenges of national security over the next generation. The commission's efforts should begin by reviewing the level of denial and deception countries now use to hide their programs. The Iranian, Libyan, North Korean and Iraqi examples are four of the cases the commission should review. Second, the new commission should focus on the scale of Pakistani scientist involvement in the illegal international arms trade, including nuclear capabilities, and the involvement of North Korea in systematic illegal international arms deals. The commission should also review foreign intelligence efforts around the world and the degree to which they knew more or less than the American intelligence community. Finally, the commission should make recommendations about the size, structure and culture of intelligence to fit it for the extraordinary challenges of a 21st century involving weapons of mass murder and mass destruction. This is the right kind of commission focused on the right questions and it would be an asset to the intelligence community. This is a commission appropriate for a time when we are each day seeing new terrorist threats, new bombings around the world and new losses of American life. It is too important not to rise above political con cerns and put the country's needs first. This is a real war and we need a commission appropriate to waging war. The consequences of failing to strengthen and support vastly improved intelligence capabilities are sobering and deadly. Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, is the author of the book Saving Lives and Saving Money. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, www.aei.org newt.org