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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (50986)	6/20/2004 8:16:59 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793917

The thing I don't understand is how so many could be so wrong, as far as the intelligence is concerned. There's a WSJ article upthread this morning that speaks to this. I don't have any difficulty conjuring up scenarios in which they could all be wrong. Doesn't mean that the scenarios are what happened of that they were, in fact, wrong, only that it's easy for me to see how that could have happened. How many operatives do you suppose we and other governments have inside Muslim extremist groups? Close to zero, I imagine. That area hasn't been a focus and it's way, way too hard to sign operatives up or get them in. That's a very alien part of the world. To the extent that intelligence organizations have reach into such communities it's through expat dissidents, who have limited access and they also have their own agendas. When analysts are called upon to come up with products, they use whatever they have. Garbage in, garbage out. Intel folks are a community just like every other profession. They share at least to a certain extent. There have been movements in that direction recently. So if their bosses in whatever country ask for a report, they do what all bureaucrats do which is call their contacts around the world and assemble a report in part from that material. It shouldn't be surprising when all the reports end up similar. Which means that they could all be wrong. Like I said, doesn't mean that they are wrong, but it does mean that you shouldn't be so surprised if they are. Your post suggest that you are assuming that all these countries are gathering and assembling intel independently from quality sources. I don't think that either is likely.

To: KLP who wrote (50986)	6/20/2004 12:27:42 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793917

Were all those intel agencies wrong? Apparently so. Iraq was a police state under Hussein and the major tools were secrecy and terror. The US and other Western countries spent decades trying to penetrate the Soviet police states and didn't have great success and didn't put nearly as much effort into penetrating Iraq. Hussein's "theme" with respect to WMDs was intransigence. He had a couple of clear reasons for the behaviour. One was defiance for general Arabic political requirements in the face of the US and UN demands, and the other was maintenence of terror over the general Iraqi population, especially the Kurds. So, at the same time he was trying to convince the UN he didn't have this stuff anymore, he was trying to tell the Kurds and Shiites, and ME more generally, he still had 'em. Sounds bizarre but not when you take into account his general long term way of operation and his psychopathy. (The WMDs are an open question until we find out what was in all those trucks that went to Syria just before the US invasion and what exactly was dumped in the rivers before and during the invasion). His behaviour with regard to terrorism was consistent. If it was pointed towards his enemies, he supported it. Intelligence about this aspect of his behaviour was a bit more reliable than about WMDs. He could not control secrecy to the same degree because so much of his external activity was run from embassies and his operatives could be tracked in the usual manner, and because various countries were tracking activies of major terrorist organizations. But penetrating the internal actvities of a fullblown police state -which by its very nature lies about everything both to itself and to the rest of the world- is extremely difficult. Unlike its relation with the Soviets, which was very consistent, the external world was inconsistent in its approach to Iraq, and this I'm sure, discouraged would be informers. Also, to think other intelligence agencies don't have some of the same kinds of problems as the US ones is probably a bit of a stretch. So I can understand a little bit about the US situation, but were all the agencies in the rest of the US wrong (military, FBI, NSA, private corporations, etc) to say nothing of the other intelligence agencies in places like UK, Australia, Israel, Russia, etc....Were they ALL wrong?