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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (215137)	1/27/2007 8:13:02 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 281500

For the most part i do believe it was bad intel, buying into what saddam said and doing little original research by a bunch of folks who could barely read much less speak the language. I wouldn't put the adjective "bad" on intel. Intel is intel. You get an overhead of building and you can be pretty sure there is a building there. You get a statement from a paid informant that the building is a chemical weapons factory and you make a decision about what level of credibility you put on your informant and the likelihood that it is a chemical weapons factory. If you can find two independent informants that can claim the same building is a chemical weapons factory [without telling them which building] your confidence level goes up. It's not certain, because you don't know if your two "independent" sources acquired their information from the same source. If your only source is some guy named Curveball that has a track record of feeding you what you want to hear, you best not make any major decisions from what Curveball has to say. If you were to look at a typical intelligence analysis report it's filled with adjectives, like "likely", "high probability", etc. Very rarely is there an item that is pegged as certain. All the calls of "likely" or whatever are subjective calls. Let's pretend for a minute, that you could put a number between zero and 100 on your final assessment of whether Iraq has WMD. Zero being, "I have no idea" and 100 being "absolute certainty". How high does that number have to be for "saber rattling"? How high does that number have to be for "sanctions" and how high does that number have to be "Start a war"? Let's return to the moment when Bush committed forces. What did he actually "know". He knew that Tenet told him is was a "slam dunk". He also knew there were some problems with validating the intel that led Tenet to believe it was a slam dunk. Like. 1. The Niger document that showed Saddam was obtaining ore was forged. 2. The intel that a particular building was producing WMD was, upon inspection by the UN a factory producing booze. 3. A picture of an alleged mobile weapons factory was nothing more than a picture of a truck. 4. They could find no scientist under questioning that could confirm that they knew anything about WMD or WMD programs. It didn't make any different whether there were minders or no minders or whether they were questioned in Iraq or out of Iraq. 5. Every time they were told by an informant that there were WMD or WMD related items at a particular facility an inspection turned up nothing. Every time. 6. They had an informant in Saddam's inner circle that told them there were no WMD. [I've forgotten his name; it's one of those funny Arabic names.] 7. There was a site where Saddam claimed the WMD were destroyed in the early 90's that the UN confirmed by chemical analysis that some WMD were destroyed. The UN didn't believe it was possible to determine quantities destroyed, but an attempt was in progress to make that assessment. 8. Saddam had an open offer to the US to send in all the CIA people that the US wanted to show them where those WMD were. An offer that the US didn't want to accept. Now go back and put in a number from 0-100 about how certain you are that Saddam had WMD. Does that number break the threshold of justifying military action? After all the stuff in 1-8, my number comes in at the 50-60 range. And I don't think you start killing people in the 50-60 range. Your mileage may vary. jttmab P.S. When the Vice President of the United States sits at CIA and wants to see the intel that Saddam has WMD what do you expect you're going to get? The intel wasn't "bad" the process and analysis was "bad".