SELECTIVE INTELLIGENCEDonald Rumsfeld has his own special sources. Are they reliable?

New Yorker ^ | -11/17/03 | by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

[mgist]

They call themselves, self-mockingly, the Cabal—a small cluster of policy advisers and analysts now based in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans.

In the past year, according to former and present Bush Administration officials, their operation, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community.

These advisers and analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11, 2001, have produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq.

They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi. By last fall, the operation rivalled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush’s main source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda.

As of last week, no such weapons had been found. And although many people, within the Administration and outside it, profess confidence that something will turn up, the integrity of much of that intelligence is now in question.

[VRWC_minion]

That's not going to help me debate my Bush hating euro friend.

Why waste your time. If he hates Bush, he acts on emotions not reason. Arguing against emotion is a losing battle.

Ask my wife.

[VRWC_minion]

Even if all the intel was pure unadulterated fiction, Bush did the right thing. Therefore proving that the intel was bogus is a strawdog argument. The issue is still, should we stick Saddam back in power ?

[VRWC_minion]

If Clinton were running this war and had presented such evidence of a potential threat to us that still hadn't panned out and then changed the reason for the war to some Wilsonian fantasy in mid stream? I can't imagine the Freeper reacion that would have resulted!

Personally, I would say he did the right thing.

[Burkeman1]

Can I bookmark your replies?

[Burkeman1]

LOL!

[Consort]

I'm debating a EU liberal in another forum.

Wombats are burrowing herbivorous marsupials.

[logician2u]

Politicians of both parties are subject to the same impulses to show "the other side" they were wrong all along.

I wouldn't put a lot of stock in what a senator says, even if it came from "official sources," as there's always the possibility his sources had an ax to grind. Politicians make such wonderful grinding stones, too.

Read this more recent article by Seymour Hirsch and you'll appreciate the idea that multiple-source intelligence should exist before any action -- war, especially -- is contemplated.

[logician2u]

Sorry. Forgot to add you to the previous post, as you would be interested in it too.

Don't envy you trying to defend GW Bush's actions. Thankfully, Klintoon didn't get the Senate to ratify the nutty World Court treaty, so no one will have to defend Bush before a war crimes tribunal in The Hague, either. This time.

[Burkeman1]

I know what you are saying. But Hersh should come under suspicion as a known left winger and ideolugue. I am old enough to know that right wingers can embellish and lie just as easily as the Left (after witnessing some on this site defend Bush and this lying war my eyes have been opened)- but Hersh is just not a good source for me to stomach.

[logician2u]

You think some neoconservative (Max Boot, possibly?) is going to be less an ideologue?

There's always a slant, which you have to take into account. What's upsetting is when some so-called journalist conveniently forgets to check primary sources and, instead, uses the "unnamed officials" ruse.

At least Hersh (sorry, I misspelled his name before) comes closer than most to naming names, which is, of course, a sure way to lose story sources when dealing with sensitive national security matters. And in his long career as a reporter, he must have a pretty good file of contacts by now.

[billbears]

It is pretending that there was some sort of neocon (a/k/a Israeli) subterfuge affecting the intelligence process

Contrary to the neocon view of slandering paleocons as anti-semitic, for me the neocon movement has nothing to do with the Israeli situation. I support the existence of Israel one hundred percent, and for the record, I also believe that this administration's 'road map' is selling the Israelis out

This has to do with kooks over at the PNAC, and the fact that many in this administration signed their letter of principle in 1997. Nowhere in the Constitution have I ever seen 'worldwide American leadership' as either a founding principle or a goal of this nation of states. However, it quite clearly states on their website that is exactly what they want

[Burkeman1]

I pretty much question the resolve on conservative cultural issues that NeoCons once said they had. They jettison those concerns pretty fast for WAR instead (Read Golberg and Frum of National Review on "gay" rights and abortion recently.)

I don't dismiss all Left wing writers as inherent liars. That would be the act of an ideolouge and to be conservative is to, above all things, not be an ideolouge! But I am skeptical of an author like Hersh who always seemed to defend a regime like the Soviet Union and their minions during the Cold War.

[JohnGalt]

Seymour Hersh is very much like Ambrose Evans Pritchard was to conservatives during the Clinton years. Completely unobstructed from personal and professional relationship in DC, he wrote a fairly sober outline of the Office of Special Plans.

The defenders of the OSP should be focused on the complete failure of the CIA and thus rationalize the politicization of intelligence (more or less shadow government) as a necessary evil rather than simply ignore the darker implications. I mean, wasn't it just 5 years ago that the country went to war on behalf of radical Islam based on charges of a phony genocide in Serbia?

[armadale]

Yes, and the mistake that most neo-cons make is that they think everybody wants what they want: freedom and democracy. The fact is that many countries & many people DON'T want that.

[armadale]

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Afghanistan (under the Taliban)

[armadale]

Oh, and by "democracy" I mean full political participation.