Failures of intelligence - (argument for pre-emptive strikes as Israel did at Osirak, 1981)

JEWISH WORLD REVIEW.COM ^ | JULY 27, 2005 | JEFF JACOBY

[CHARLITE]

Which kind of intelligence failure is better — the kind that badly understates a threat, such as the one in London, or the kind that overstates a threat, such as the insistent warnings before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein was armed with weapons of mass destruction?

Even in the best intelligence services, failures are sometimes inevitable. Foresight will never be as sharp as hindsight. Only after the fact — after the Underground blows up, after 9/11, after the stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons are nowhere to be found — is it clear what the picture looks like once the ''dots'' are ''connected.'' Before the fact, it isn't always clear that there are even any dots to search for.

So what kind of culture do we want intelligence agencies to foster among their operatives and analysts: one that tends to be overly focused on possible threats, or one that is more likely to downplay them? In general, would we rather take action to eliminate a danger that turns out to have been overstated — or take no action, and then be stunned when the enemy strikes?

Surely the question answers itself. When the enemy is an international terrorist organization or a violent and dictatorial regime, preemption must trump reaction. Ousting the most brutal and homicidal tyrant in the Arab world, even if we then discover that he didn't pose the WMD threat we had envisioned, beats watching Osama bin Laden's acolytes steer jetliners into the World Trade Center. Bombing the Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak, as Israel did in 1981, beats waiting until Iraq launches its first nuclear strike. International law has always recognized that states have a right of self-defense, including anticipatory self-defense. So did US presidents long before George W. Bush entered the White House.

[CHARLITE]

Well reasoned, logical argument by Jacoby.

http://jewishworldreview.com/jeff/jacoby072705.php3

[maestro]

.......Surely the question answers itself. When the enemy is an international terrorist organization or a violent and dictatorial regime, preemption must trump reaction. .......

....to protect the innocent from 'evil'.......sounds like the right thing to do.....

this has NOTHING to do with Drawinist Abortion,......move on......?

/sarcasm?

[Eagles6]

"Fortunately, he was stupid enough to invade Kuwait. That triggered the Gulf War, in the course of which the world discovered just how deadly a WMD menace the Iraqi butcher had become. It is chilling to imagine what the planet would be like today if Saddam had managed to complete and deploy those weapons before the United States even realized he had them."

Very good. People forget what saddam had and what we didn't know he had. The administration needs to do a better job of telling the public what we did find. We found chemical weapons, bio programs, everything needed to restart the nuke program, proscribed missles, an illegal uav program. We didn't find the large stockpiles of chemical and bio weapons that we knew he had. That he admitted he had. Do we take his word that he destroyed them and forgot where or, post 9/11 do we do something else? It is unthinkable that we didn't act and something much worse than 9/11 happened.