Surprise, Surprise

NRO ^ | January 29, 2004 | Jed Babbin

[John H K]

Intelligence sources said then and still say now that some of the heaviest fighting by special forces occurred around Al Qaim, on the Syrian border. The Iraqis were desperate to keep that highway open to continue the access to Syria for those convoys which were carrying senior Iraqi officials, carloads of cash, and the people and materials key to Saddam's WMDs.

Despite all we were told about senior regime officials fleeing to Syria, almost the entire deck of cards has been apprehended, all of them in Iraq.

[Lizavetta]

Question: If there's a known crack house in your neighborhood - known as a crackhouse because people buy crack there, known crack dealers go in and out, etc. - and the police chief orders a raid that takes several months or more to enact....and when they cops finally get there they find no crack.....would people be saying the police chief lied?

Or would they think the crack house took their crack and flushed it down the john, sold all they had, or moved it to their friend's house in the next town?

[Daphne]

Everyone knows that all the Dems who say there weren't WMDs are only saying that to oppose Bush. if the president were a Dem, they would be promoting that war more than anyone else. It's all political.

Shows how much they care about our security.

[Dog Gone]

The whole premise of this article seems incredibly naive. There's no way that a sneak attack with anything other than ballistic missiles can ever be conducted today.

In case this author can't recall, we weren't even able to unload the 4th ID until the war was basically over.

It takes time to assemble an invasion force, and the element of surprise in doing so is simply not possible in the 21st century. We weren't fritting away valuable time at the UN. We were getting the troops in place during that entire period.

[neverdem]

I believe we got a couple in the last month. I found this via Google:

All but 13 of Iraqi `deck of cards' rounded up


AP , BAGHDAD, IRAQ
Sunday, Dec 28, 2003,Page 7
Thirteen fugitives remain from the original "deck of cards" of top Saddam Hussein regime members, but US forces are increasingly focusing on new lists of individuals thought to be taking a more active role in the anti-US insurgency, military intelligence sources say.

To create these lists, US military units and their coalition allies have developed computer databases, which they have updated with information on every bomb blast, firefight, suspect detained and tip provided by a local resident.

The deck of cards, prepared by US intelligence before the March invasion, contains images of the 55 figures that the US military was particularly interested in capturing, beginning with Saddam himself as the ace of spades.

The US troops who entered Iraq also carried a so-called black list of hundreds of second-tier leaders targeted for arrest as well as an even larger gray list, which contains "persons of interest" -- Iraqis wanted for questioning. Those lists have not been updated and have grown less relevant to the current insurgency, a senior US military official said on condition of anonymity.

In Tikrit, Saddam's hometown north of Baghdad, the Army's 4th Infantry Division has found its own informants and databases more useful than the CIA's lists of former regime loyalists, said the division's Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Russell.

The old CIA lists "were the starting point" for rounding up the top officials in Saddam's Baath Party, especially those believed to have committed or ordered atrocities or who had knowledge of unconventional weapons, said Lieutenant-Colonel Ken Devan, the top intelligence officer of the Army's 1st Armored Division, which controls Baghdad.

Since many of those fugitives have already been captured, their interrogations have provided fodder for further fugitive lists and arrests, Devan said.

"It's kind of like pulling on a string. You just keep on pulling and you don't really know what's on the other end," Devan said.
This story has been viewed 262 times.

[dark_lord]

It isn't relevant in any case.
We moved a "counter" -- getting troops in Iraq. Every play Risk? We need a military position there.

Did Bush lie? Well, lets just say he took the most optimal intelligence to make the case we needed to have an excuse to position our troops there. Who cares if WMD are there, or were there? That was a political position for the public.

[AndyTheBear]

You have a good point. But it might well have been a surprise if the war continued across the border to Syria.

[LS]

As to WMDs, though there are some realities:

Japan (today, posted here on FR) said Iraq had WMDs just before the war;

An Iraqi official (today, posted here on FR) said Iraq had WMDs just before the war;

the intel services of Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, and Germany in addition to the CIA, all said Saddam had WMDs just before the war;

the toxin levels in the Tigris have NEVER been explained. That story was dumped like a hot potato. The gas trucks were never sufficiently explained.

Now, I could believe the CIA was wrong---they were at some points in the Cold War. But I think it ridiculous to think that ALL THESE NATIONS, with their independent methods of verification (many not nearly so "nice" as the CIA's) all come to the same conclusion . . . and that all of them are wrong. That does not compute.

[Dog Gone]

Boy, crossing the border into Syria would have been a hard sell. I'm sure we would have lost British support for that, and all our other allies.

We made no case for doing that, and even these vague reports of convoys of "stuff" from Iraq to Syria aren't terribly convincing, even to me.

There's just no way to conquer and change the entire Middle East. We have our hands full with Iraq, and those people wanted to be liberated. I'm not sure that's the case with Syria.

[HankReardon]

December 13, 2003 American armed forces found a WMD that was responsible for deaths of well over 1,000,000 Iraqi and Iranians. What a great success!

[Martin Tell]

I agree that a true "sneak" attack is probably impossible.

I also disagree with the conclusion that we delayed our attack on Iraq for diplomatic reasons. In their book "An End to Evil," Richard Perle and David Frum state that there was no "diplomatic delay." It took us all that time to get everything in place for an attack. They go on to argue that our military needs to be reformed before our next attack (Syria?).

Good read, and I highly recommend it.

[Verginius Rufus]

Jed Babbin, the author of this piece, coined the saying "Going to war without France is like going deerhunting without your accordion."

[sarasmom]

It computes for people who think Intel plays politics the same way the Politicians and Diplomats do, and rely on ABCCBSNBCCNNBBC as their primary news sources.

Hard to believe that the same people who live and work in an economic reality of just-in-time production dont grasp that the concept will also be applied to expensive WMD finished products.
The media keeps looking for warehoused product,as if lethal WMD munitions have no shelf life, and dont require expensive and dangerous maintenance facilities.
Expensive maintenance being the operative words.
Sigh!
Oh well, I am obviously preaching to the choir here.

[WVNan]

I do agree that the military ought not to have announced that we would be launching an offense against the Taliban in the mountains come spring. I caught that one last night and just shook my head. Do they think they will find anyone home when they get there?

[elli1]

Despite all we were told about senior regime officials fleeing to Syria, almost the entire deck of cards has been apprehended, all of them in Iraq.

True, but you have to remember that the deck was put together by us, sitting out here on the outside. And some of the characters that went into the deck, we didn't even have photos of. Saddam was known for having a high turnover in management, so it was doubly difficult to know who was in charge of what & for how long. It wasn't like Saddam was running an open government & we had good info on all of the senior-type characters. Remember all the confusion over the various layers of Iraqi defense forces & who was in charge. Plus, you have to consider that once the deck was ''published'', those guys in the deck were probably just too hot to handle politically...think in the context of Powell's visit to Syria. Then, you have to remember that a good number of high-level Nazis made it out of Germany & into South America so I don't doubt that a significant number of other Baathists & assistant level senior Iraqis hightailed it out of Iraq.

[sarasmom]

Do you think we announced it before or after the fact?
I must admit to a certain amount of disdain for the CIA, vs operational military intelligence.
In a perfect world, where Jimmy Carter remained unborn,shared classified raw intelligence information would seem to be logical and practical in the shadowland field of covert intelligence.
We live in an imperfect world.
Jimmy Carter was actually POTUS.
I doubt this country will ever fully recover from the damage he caused, and that his legacy of socialist elected officials still cause, to all spectrums of the intelligence community, among other unforgivable sins that only God, has the capacity to inflict righteous retribution, or even simple justice.
rant off.

[HankReardon]

There was a well run smuggling operation that went through Syria all through the 90's, anything and everything went through there.

[AndyTheBear]

Boy, crossing the border into Syria would have been a hard sell.

Sure, but anytime you sell a military action first, it can't be a surprise.

You still have a good point that you can't hide a big military build up. But my point was that in some cases you can gain surprise through trickery and deception.

Of coarse, such actions may make other countries very nervous. But this is two fold, because making ruthless terror sponsoring dictatorships afraid makes the world safer.

[rintense]

You are being far too reasonable and level headed. STOP IT! ;)