Later Howard Dean, that human helium balloon ever resistant to the gravity of mature judgment, said of the administration that they lied us into war. He left no doubt that he meant they did it deliberately and cynically. But there seems to me a thing that is blindingly obvious, and yet I've never seen it remarked upon. It is that an administration that would coldly lie us into Iraq is an administration that would lie about what was found there. And yet the soldiers, searchers and investigators who looked high and low throughout Iraq made it clear they had found nothing, an outcome the administration did not dispute and came to admit. But an administration that would lie about reasons would lie about results, wouldn't it? Or try to? Yet they were candid.
Please read her entire Wall Street Journal column: “It's Not About Bush _Has America turned a corner on Iraq?”
Vice President Cheney has already said that neither
the president of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence.”The two key words in this sentence are “purposely” and “member”.
If no member of the administration purposely lied, who lied or misled?
President Bush has acknowledged that the intelligence community made errors and it is his responsibility to correct them. The administration was misled. There were members of the intelligence community who warned that the WMD case was weak and that evidence for the Al Qaeda-Iraq connection was bogus. These warnings apparently never made it to the administration. They were suppressed by high-level officials. These men, who thought they were members of the administration, were most likely in the office of the Director of Central Intelligence and in the Office of Special Plans in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Having good reason to believe that Saddam had WMD, and thinking that a war was necessary and justified, they ignored and / or deliberately buried evidence to the contrary.
Peggy Noonan credits the administration with being candid about its failure to find WMD. I suspect that they candid because the system still has some integrity. The military officers searching for WMD would gladly have reported any WMD that they found. They displayed integrity by reporting that they found none.
Assume that the Office of Special Plans had pushed them towards fabricated reporting. The search was wide, and involved too many soldiers and officers for this kind of lie to take hold.
Intelligence Analysis is an art. It requires both skill and moral courage. Let me be clear, the courage required is minimal when compared to that shown by soldiers everyday. Analysts owe solders the courage to report truthfully. High level officials owe analysts and soldiers to pass credible warnings to the administration.
Successful intelligence reform will concentrate in creating conditions that en-courage analysts to do their jobs well and report conclusions accurately. The administration would do well to heed the words of Pat Lang
If the Congress really wants better intelligence so as to avoid future disasters, it will have
to “grasp the nettle” itself and dictate re-organization and a new beginning which seeks to
protect the artists from the bureaucrats. If this does not happen, then superficial changes
may occur but nothing of significance will be produced from within “the community,”
and we will all just wait for “the next time.”
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