HerbEly

Shaidle's Law of Studies

Thanks to Kathy for this: IF you substitute the phrase "studies show..." with the phrase "grandma says..." or "everyone knows..." and the sentence still rings true, then that study is scientifically sound.

George Tenet: Top CIA Officials Not Warned about Curveball

From  Michiko Kakutani’s NYT review of former DCI George Tenet’s book:

Mr. Tenet also disputes the allegation made by Tyler Drumheller, the C.I.A.’s former head of the European division, that he — Mr. Drumheller — had raised serious questions about the credibility of a key source known as Curveball with top agency officials before the invasion. He does not, however, come to terms with Mr. Drumheller’s other allegation, made on “60 Minutes,” that a C.I.A. source in Mr. Hussein’s inner circle said in the fall of 2002 that the dictator had no active weapons-of-mass-destruction program and that this information was ignored.

Yesterday, I suggested that this is one of the key questions that CBS should ask Tenet tomorrow night. On the assumption that the reviewer’s summary is correct and that Drumheller’s allegation is false, we are left to wonder why top officials did not learn that Curveball was a suspect source. It will be interesting to see if, as this blog has suggested, Tenet was on of the “Powers that Be” who did had already decided that the war would be fought and did not want to entertain contrary evidence.

Senator Chuck Robb, when speaking at the Miller Center in Charlottesville on June 2, 2005, supported the  allegation that the CIA'S top three were, in fact, informed about the unreliability of Curveball reports.

Did He Shoot Himself in the Right or the Left Foot?

   

Armed Forces Journal just published Lt. Col Paul Yingling’s A Failure in Generalship. The article is critical of Army Leadership and indirectly critical of the President. While it is coolly analytical in tone, the article is evidently passionate.

    I will post comments over the next few days. In the meantime please read the entire article. Here are a few extracts – with some emphasis of my own.

For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. In 2007, Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.

These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America's general officer corps. America's generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America's generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress.
…..
Armies do not fight wars; nations fight wars. War is not a military activity conducted by soldiers, but rather a social activity that involves entire nations. Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz noted that passion, probability and policy each play their role in war. Any understanding of war that ignores one of these elements is fundamentally flawed.
The passion of the people is necessary to endure the sacrifices inherent in war. Regardless of the system of government, the people supply the blood and treasure required to prosecute war. The statesman must stir these passions to a level commensurate with the popular sacrifices required…. The greatest error the statesman can make is to commit his nation to a great conflict without mobilizing popular passions to a level commensurate with the stakes of the conflict.
…
The most tragic error a general can make is to assume without much reflection that wars of the future will look much like wars of the past.

...

After visualizing the conditions of future combat, the general is responsible for explaining to civilian policymakers the demands of future combat and the risks entailed in failing to meet those demands…. The general who speaks too loudly of preparing for war while the nation is at peace places at risk his position and status. However, the general who speaks too softly places at risk the security of his country.
…
While the physical courage of America's generals is not in doubt, there is less certainty regarding their moral courage. In almost surreal language, professional military men blame their recent lack of candor on the intimidating management style of their civilian masters. Now that the public is immediately concerned with the crisis in Iraq, some of our generals are finding their voices. They may have waited too long.

    Did LTC Yingling “shoot himself in the foot”, i.e. end his career with this article? James Joyner  suggests that he hasn’t:

An interesting critique and one that has a long tradition in modern militaries, which tolerate respectful dissent as part of their constant learning process. Indeed, a young Winston Churchill first came to public attention with a series of essays his wrote as a second lieutenant for the London Daily Telegraph criticizing the tactics used in the India frontiers wars. The resulting 1897 book, Story of the Malakand Field Force, was derided by some as “A Subaltern’s Advice to the Generals” but it was nonetheless read.

I respect him for taking the risk and telling the truth as he sees it. According to Mt. 18:8 the risk is worth taking.

George Tenet and the Generalized Iceberg Theorem

    The teasers for former DCI George Tenet’s book At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA remind me of Marshall’s Generalized Iceberg Theorem: “Seven eighth’s of everything can’t be seen.”

    According to Dafna Linzer in this morning’s Washington Post

Former CIA director George J. Tenet bitterly complains in a forthcoming television interview that White House officials set him up as a scapegoat when they revealed that he had assured President Bush the intelligence on Iraq's suspected weapons arsenal was a "slam dunk."

Tenet will be on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday night to tell his side of the story. Here are three questions about things that couldn’t be seen:

1. The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction did not demonstrate an immanent threat as a critical reading would have shown. How could the DCI have not known that the case was flimsy?
2. What did the DCI know about the suspect intelligence source curve ball? The administration used information from this source to support the case for war, even though intelligence professionals were warning that he was not to be trusted.
3. DISTSUM 044-O2 warned against believing reports from Al-Libi, a key source purporting to connect Al-Qaeda with Iraq.  Was the former DCI aware of this document and did he tell the President?

Tune in to 60 minutes Sunday night and check this blog Monday for some reaction.

NOTE: This post linked to Beltway Traffic Jam for 04/28/07