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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (25496)	2/9/2007 2:35:19 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

It's difficult to understand the objection of the IG. If the activity broke no laws and violated no policies, what is inappropriate about having competing sets of analysts looking at intelligence to get alternative viewpoints? One of the criticisms made by Bush administration critics is that the White House relied on stovepiped intel analysis for the WMD question -- which came from the official CIA analysts and directed by George Tenet. They Were For Dissent And Alternative Analysis Before They Were Against It By Captain Ed on Iraq Captain's Quarters The acting Inspector General of the Defense Department has issued a long-awaited report on the intelligence analysis provided by Douglas Feith during the period between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. According to Thomas Gimble, Feith and others did not violate laws or policies at the Department of Defense, nor did they mislead Congress -- but Gimble still concludes that their activities were "inappropriate": <<< A Pentagon investigation into the handling of prewar intelligence has criticized civilian Pentagon officials for conducting their own intelligence analysis to find links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, but said the officials did not violate any laws or mislead Congress, according to Congressional officials who have read the report. The long-awaited report by the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Thomas F. Gimble, was sent to Congress on Thursday. It is the first major review to rebuke senior officials working for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for the way intelligence was used before the invasion of Iraq early in 2003. Working under Douglas J. Feith, who at the time was under secretary of defense for policy, the group “developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and Al Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers,” the report concluded. Excerpts were quoted by Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who has long been critical of Mr. Feith and other Pentagon officials. The report, and the dueling over its conclusions, shows that bitter divisions over the handling of prewar intelligence remain even after many of the substantive questions have been laid to rest and the principal actors have left the government. In a rebuttal to an earlier draft of Mr. Gimble’s report, Eric S. Edelman, the under secretary of defense, said the group’s activities were authorized by Mr. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz. They did not produce formal intelligence assessments, and they were properly shared, the rebuttal said. >>> It's difficult to understand the objection of the IG. If the activity broke no laws and violated no policies, what is inappropriate about having competing sets of analysts looking at intelligence to get alternative viewpoints? One of the criticisms made by Bush administration critics is that the White House relied on stovepiped intel analysis for the WMD question -- which came from the official CIA analysts and directed by George Tenet. In this case, the Secretary and Undersecretary of Defense wanted an investigation of intel to determine whether Iraq had operational ties to al-Qaeda, a reasonable question given the circumstances. The CIA -- which the Democrats believe got it wrong on WMD -- didn't believe that radical Islamists would cooperate with the supposedly secular Saddam Hussein. Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz authorized Feith to review the intelligence to see if evidence existed for a different conclusion, and Feith found enough contacts between Saddam and AQ to at least challenge the notion that they would have never considered a partnership. Instead, the IG scolded Feith for not following the consensus, and then not following the procedures for "rare" disagreement. That differs rather dramatically from the scolding given to the intel communities by the 9/11 Commission and enthusiastically supported by the same elements in Congress that now want a piece of Douglas Feith for daring to disagree and to do so publicly. Back then, dissenters got celebrated as visionaries who had the courage to try to wake up the decisionmakers. Now Congress wants to punish someone who essentially did what Congress demanded during those reviews. None of this has anything to do with the war or its intel analysis. Feith and Wolfowitz have served as targets for Democrats for years, and now that they have returned to power, they want to use whatever they can to finish them politically. Carl Levin and Jay Rockefeller can't wait to start holding hearings on the matter, even though the IG explicitly states that no laws were broken and the effort was properly revealed to Congress. This is just another venue for political payback, and nothing more. captainsquartersblog.com nytimes.com

To: Sully- who wrote (25496)	2/12/2007 3:07:10 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Feith Memo..... by The Scrapbook The Weekly Standard 02/19/2007 The 'Feith Memo' Revisited Much press attention was given last week to a report from the Department of Defense Inspector General. The IG report examined the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, and its work on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. In the fall of 2003, the office produced a 50-point bulleted list detailing contacts and cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda. The document, first reported in this magazine ("Case Closed," by Stephen F. Hayes, November 24, 2003), became known as the "Feith Memo." Critics of the war are now celebrating the IG report both as a critique of the process by which Feith's office examined intelligence (it is that) and confirmation that there was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda (it is not). As always, Michigan senator Carl Levin is dishonestly leading the charge. The inspector general found that Feith's office engaged in alternative intelligence analysis (i.e., not emanating from the CIA) and deemed those activities "inappropriate." He's both right and wrong. As this magazine reported at the time, there is no question that the Feith shop was conducting analysis, their denials notwithstanding. But what's wrong with alternative analysis? As former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy asks in National Review: What was so "inappropriate"? The people who actually had to fight the war had the audacity to conduct their own independent assessment of what we now know beyond cavil was the Intelligence Community's appallingly sparse and shoddy work. Feith and his unit engaged in critical thinking (can't have that!), and allegedly failed to register their disagreements in a fashion consistent with Intelligence Community protocols (i.e., the governing standards under which, in just the last two decades, the IC has missed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the emergence of India as a nuclear power, etc.). Or, as Feith himself put it: Of course his memo "varied from [the] consensus. It was a criticism of that consensus. That is why it was written." Last week's IG report--or at least the unclassified executive summary--also challenges the Feith Memo on substance. The report says that the Feith office "did not provide 'the most accurate analysis of intelligence' to senior decisionmakers." Now seems like a good time to point out that the intelligence community itself did not provide the most accurate intelligence either. Remember the intelligence community consensus that Baathists and jihadists would not collaborate because of their ideological differences? That seems rather quaint given the daily, deadly Baathist-jihadist collaboration in Baghdad today. What Carl Levin and others would have us believe is that because the Feith analysis deviated from that of the intelligence community, the Feith analysis was wrong and there was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. Some of the conclusions in the Feith Memo did not check out, as we suggested would happen from the beginning. But others are hard to explain away. As Levin pushes to declassify the IG report, we hope he'll join our calls for declassification of a few other items. * A document captured in postwar Iraq showing that the Iraqi regime harbored and financed Abdul Rahman Yasin, a key figure in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. * Transcripts of telephone intercepts from senior Iraqi intelligence officials reporting their support for al Qaeda affiliates in northern Iraq. * Intelligence cited by the Clinton administration that Iraqi chemical weapons scientists were working with al Qaeda-linked Sudanese military officials in the 1990s. * The FBI debriefing of Wali Khan Amin Shah, a senior al Qaeda operative in U.S. custody since 1995. He told the FBI that Abu Hajer al Iraqi, described by another al Qaeda member as Osama bin Laden's best friend, had a good relationship with Iraqi Intelligence. The list goes on. <snip> weeklystandard.com