Is there another possibility to all this? Is it possible the Iranians 'ended' their program in 2003, only to transfer it to Syria? Running their weapons program in what is essentailly a vassal state gives them deniablity on the world stage, while still retaining total control. Factor in Isreal's still mystery shrouded airstrike a few months ago. Maybe the portion of the NIE made public doesn't tell the whole story.
Hans Mast
· 2 years ago
That, however, doesn't change the fact that the intel community has consistently concluded until now that Iran had an active nuclear-weapons program, and refused to end it. That conclusion fits the facts somewhat better than the new one does. If Iran ended its nuclear program in 2003, why did they insist on refusing to verify it with their trading partners in the EU for the next several years? Why did the mullahs refuse to comply with UN Security Council resolutions and accept trade and diplomatic sanctions rather than allow verification at key sites? Just to prove a point when the US intel community suddenly reversed course, an event that no one predicted?
I would remind you that it was inexplicable why Sadaam Hussein didn't allow the IAEA to verify that *he* didn't have WMD. Why sit there and get invaded when you don't even have anything substantial? The answer to this is fairly simple. Dictators aren't logical. There was a huge effort during the Cold War to understand Soviet psyche. It's just incredibly hard. One can tell that logic is not one of the strong points of such people if they are in such a position in the first place.
burt
· 2 years ago
I do not have a high regard for Armitage, for among other reasons for being weak. He has a low regard for Brill, apparently for being weak. Why oh why would we rehire Brill? Oh I forgot, I have an even lower regard for Negroponte.
JeanneB
· 2 years ago
It's almost as if the intelligence agencies are trying to undermine U.S. foreign policy by---discrediting the intelligence agencies.
This is the dillema we face: Our intelligence communities, within 2 years, distribute two completely contradictory findings, each one with "high confidence". No one has to explain the change. We are not to know who got it so wrong the first time (or the 2nd?). We are simply told to accept that the information we use to determine our future security has changed 360 degrees...move on.
Madness. And Maddening!
Sansoucy
· 2 years ago
Hmmm. Let's say I got a phone call at 8:00PM from an acquaintance who told me, "A killer is coming to your house later tonight to kill you and your family and burn your house down. An hour later, the same guy calls back and says, "Never mind. I was wrong. The guy isn't coming."
Which message would I be acting on throughout the evening?
Teresa
· 2 years ago
While it may be prudent to take steps like locking your door, I would hope that you would not be planning on going over and killing the guy after getting the second message.
Sansoucy
· 2 years ago
Kill him? Certainly not. But I might kick in his door, put him on the floor, toss his house to make certain he didn't have anything more lethal than a No-Pest Strip available, and grind the barrel of my 12-gauge in his ear while saying, "Listen reeeeaaaally carefully, mofo, get froggy with me - or even *look like* you're getting froggy - and you're worm-food. I don't rely on equivocal 'intelligence' when my family is at stake. Kapeeeesch? Y'all be careful, now."
terrye
· 2 years ago
Why did Saddam allow his country to be invaded rather than comply with the weapons inspectors? Perhaps saving face is more important than saving their regimes.
The truth is we can not really know. There are people who see this as an effort to let Iran off the hook and undermine the Bush administration, maybe it is. However, if the Iranians do produce a nuclear bomb in the near future these intel people are going to look even more suspect than they already do. I am not sure these career people would risk that.
The Democrats will try to use this to their advantage, no doubt, but Republicans can do the same thing if they simply make the point that without some saber rattling and pressure the Iranians would probably have their bomb already.
I do think that the Iranians might be waiting in the hopes that someone like Barak Obama wins the election in 2008, then they know they will be home free. This might be why they have jacked around with everyone. They are waiting to see which way the wind blows.
It is also true that a lot of the information we had about Saddam and his stockpiles came from Iraqi dissidents who may have had their own agenda, it could be that some of the information the NIE used in the 2005 report came from the same sort of people in Iran. If they want to take out the mullahs, they need to do it themselves. It has gotten to the point where no one knows what to believe anymore because of the all agendas out there.
But I do think the Iranians are dangerous and we need to keep the pressure on them.
Monkei
· 2 years ago
The Democrats will try to use this to their advantage, no doubt, but Republicans can do the same thing if they simply make the point that without some saber rattling and pressure the Iranians would probably have their bomb already.
The GOP lost their ability to use this excuse when all the "real" facts of WMD's were exposed along with the "mushroom cloud" reasoning. Good luck trying to get the "be very scared" reasoning past anyone other than the 30 percent of Americans that remain scared and devoted to this administration and president.
sashal
· 2 years ago
Saddam did comply with weapon' inspections. And it did not happen hundreds years ago, but under Bush II administration. So, you can't claim historical ignorance, you must remember what had happened 4-5 years ago, unless you are 3 year old... or, may be your only source for the info is FOX news and Rush radio show...
coldwarrior415
· 2 years ago
I guess that depends on the meaning of "comply." Please provide evidence Saddam complied with UN inspections.
sashal
· 2 years ago
now I was tellinng the above poster about time period 2002-2003. And if we are talking about the same time span, right before the war began, then we understand each other, my friend. Here you go( from the UN report) :
UN weapons inspectors began their work in Iraq November 27 and left March 18. Iraq submitted a declaration containing information about its weapons of mass destruction December 7, as required by UN Security Council Resolution 1441. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conducted 237 inspections at 148 sites, including 27 sites not previously inspected. UNMOVIC inspectors conducted 731 inspections at 411 sites, including 88 sites not previously inspected. Of those inspections, 22 percent were related to chemical weapons, 28 percent to biological weapons, and 30 percent to missiles. The remaining 20 percent were multidisciplinary inspections, involving experts from each disarmament area.
UNMOVIC carried out a total of eight aerial surveillance and monitoring missions by helicopter and 16 reconnaissance missions using U-2 and Mirage aircraft between mid-February and mid-March 2003.
Inspectors also conducted 14 private interviews with Iraqi scientists, out of 54 that they had requested, between January and March 2003. Iraq provided 31 lists of Iraqi scientists to UNMOVIC, five of which contained the names of experts involved in the handling and destruction of prohibited weapons materials. Some of these scientists were involved in destroying anthrax—one of the most important outstanding disarmament issues—but inspectors were withdrawn before those scientists could be interviewed. UNMOVIC considered such interviews to be a critical source of information, especially when, as Iraq claimed, documentation did not exist to support Baghdad’s assertion that it had destroyed its prohibited weapons.
The IAEA found no evidence that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Based on information in the May 30 report and previously issued documents, UNMOVIC inspectors:
Supervised the destruction of 72 prohibited al Samoud-2 missiles and dozens of associated warheads. The May 30 report said Iraq destroyed 74 warheads and that 25 missiles and 38 warheads remained to be destroyed, but those numbers differ from previous UN statements. Supervised the destruction of three al Samoud-2 missile launchers but said six remained to be destroyed. Supervised the destruction of two casting chambers capable of producing motors for prohibited missiles. Discovered 231 illegal Volga missile engines. Iraq had declared that it had imported only 131 such engines, but the report places the total number at 380. Supervised the destruction of five engines—presumably Volga engines—for al Samoud-2 missiles. The May 30 report, however, stated that 326 remained to be destroyed and did not explain the apparent discrepancy between the number of engines imported and those slated for destruction. Discovered 14 empty 122-millimeter rocket warheads that could be used to deliver chemical weapons. Iraq notified UNMOVIC that it had discovered another four warheads. Supervised the destruction of 14 155-millimeter shells containing mustard gas that had been found by the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1997 at a declared location. UNSCOM had emptied four of the shells but not destroyed them. Discovered a component of a cluster sub-munition designed to deliver chemical or biological weapons. Discovered fuel spray tanks modified for possible use in delivering chemical or biological agents. Found and destroyed a small quantity of a precursor chemical for the production of mustard agent. The May 30 report stated the quantity was 500 milliliters, but a February UNMOVIC report placed the amount at one liter. Verified Iraq’s declarations that it had reinstalled eight pieces of prohibited chemical equipment. UNMOVIC decided that Iraq should destroy the equipment, but the destruction was not carried out before UNMOVIC left the country. Observed Iraqi efforts to recover physical evidence of 157 R-400 bombs, built for the delivery of biological agents, that Iraq claimed to have destroyed and apparently buried in 1991. According to the May 30 report, the excavations accounted for 104 bombs, which, combined with the 24 bombs excavated by UNSCOM at the same site, accounted for 128 munitions. The liquid contents of two bombs UNMOVIC excavated tested positive for anthrax. Were unable to determine whether Iraq had pursued an unmanned aerial vehicle program to deliver chemical and biological weapons. Discovered no mobile facilities for producing weapons.
sashal
· 2 years ago
and the main point of course is--They were there on the ground and if we did not rush to war, we all know what the conclusion of those inspections would have been.
Unfortunately the neoconservative views were for the regime change in Iraq and democracy revolution (Trotsky methodology) throughout the ME
txslr
· 2 years ago
Saddam allowed inspections as long as there were U.S. infantry divisions camped on his borders. He never complied with his obligations under the cease-fire. No one, not even Jacque Chirac has ever claimed that he did.
The official U.S. policy of regime change in Iraq was put in place in 1998 in the Iraq Liberation Act. It was signed by Bill Clinton and stated: "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."
coldwarrior415
· 2 years ago
Not at all that sure that IF we had given the inspectors more time they would have completed their assignments. Saddam was playing shell games. He was selectively granting access and denying access, often to the same facilities, and there never was a full and complete inventory of anything that Saddam had declared he had in 1991, nor any sort of real inventory as to what he may have had, based on known transit documents and receipts and other documentation during the late 1990's.
In the end, Saddam had precious little. He had the infrastructure, had the monetary menas, had the intent....but putting myself in the ultimate cat bird seat, would it have been a better chocie to do nothing? Allow the UN inspections to disintegrate? Allow for the Chinese and Russians and French, whose governments had a vested interest in maintainign Saddam in Baghdad to further erode the sanctions or end them entirely? They all circumvented them, anyway.
An absence of positive intelligence on an adversary does not equate with a lack of intent on the part of that same adversary.
It is easy when you have no stake in the game to make calls and raises.
Any US President, be it Clinton or Bush, or Reagan or Truman, sometimes has to make choices that involve more than the present. They do have a stake in the game. There is often little time for second-guessing. Why provide an advantage to an aversary by refusal to committ to any course of action, remaining neutered in the process by that inaction?
And would we really have known what the conclusions would have been had we not gone into Iraq? Guesstimates and fingers-crossed hope is no way to exercise authority over our armed forces nor our foreign policy.
As for Iran, since 1979 they have not exactly demonstrated a clear and consitent record of complying with even the basic norms of international law, and have made veru public statements about their intent. They have the wherewithal to do many things, many of them lethal. Are we to believe only their statements that they "only kid, really, just kidding" or their statements that they want to destroy the Great Satan and are more than willing to assist anyone who can help them accomplish that goal? Which set of statements and actions would be the best choice to believe?
sashal
· 2 years ago
I appreciate the honest and thoughtful answer, Coldwarrior. Your position is understandable and quite reasonable if we disregard humanitarian factors involved... I was against intevention in Iraq because I realized that they are not and can not be a threat to the USA, and regime change for whatever purposes is not our business.
Let’s ask a different : is it the proper business of the United States government to use its military so that people in other nations can be liberated from repressive governments? Quite simply, no, it isn’t. That isn’t what our government exists to do. It should use its military to defend our country, any allies with which we may have defense treaties and vital resources. It cannot be worthwhile to liberate other peoples because it is a kind of war that not only goes far beyond what our government is supposed to be doing and engages in conflicts that it has no right to involve our people in, but also because it quite clearly harms the United States in the process.
Aggressive war cannot be moral and it cannot be just. To choose war, as our government indeed did, is to choose to unleash all the horrors of war on people who have done no lasting, grave or permanent harm to us. They may or may not be wretched, awful people. They may or may not be tyrants. Whether they are or not is actually irrelevant to the question of whether our government has the right to commit aggression against another state. The bottom line is that the attacked state has done nothing to deserve our attack on it. How much less, then, do the civilians killed in the process deserve it? How can unleashing hell on earth without cause ever be worthwhile? It cannot be.
coldwarrior415
· 2 years ago
Just a bit of myopia evident in your response.
"Let’s ask a different : is it the proper business of the United States government to use its military so that people in other nations can be liberated from repressive governments? Quite simply, no, it isn’t."
It may well be. It has proven so in the past. There are times when liberating a nation from a despot can lead to better overall national security in the long run. Not adressing that despot can lead to later, more involved, and more costly threats to our own national securrity. So, for that matter, I find your position to be just a bit off the mark.
Was the Iraq War a legal war? That question has been asked many many times. Congress authorized it. Congress provided funding. The United Nations had a dozen or more Resolutions calling for compliance. There was ample evidence that Saddam was not exactly a nice person. There was eveidence that the oil-for-food regime was coming apart at the seams and Saddam was gaming us. other nations in the region looked toward Saddam as another Saladin, more a symbol than an actual Saladin, but in that realm, having a Saddam, or any other major leader freely and openly sticking his finger in our eye, and the UN as well, made for an environment that just about any polayer in the region knew for a fact that we were powerless to do anything at all about Saddam...to include Saddam himself.
So...our not doing anything about Saddam for over a decade made it far more difficult for us to have any say or input in a region that was/is vital to our national security.
Given the decade prior to our moving in to Iraq, I'd say, honestly, that removing Saddam was a darn good first step.
jerry
· 2 years ago
And Saddam would still have his prisons, rape rooms and the like.
sashal
· 2 years ago
many do, so?
JonPrichard
· 2 years ago
And Libya would still have an active Nuclear weapons program and Iran wouldn't have stopped (maybe temporarily) their nuclear program and the whole northern section of Iraq would be harboring all manner of terrorist camps and Lebanon would still be in total control of Syria and on and on and on.
ajacksonian
· 2 years ago
Having retired from a component of the IC, I see the NIE a bit differently than anyone else. The NIE is a product of a bureaucratic system set up under the ODNI... I know that reading beaureaucratese is difficult, and it does take some years of reading such things to finally figure out why they say what they say... and what they don't say.
First the study is highly and strictly delimited: observe its title.
Second: the methodology and gatekeeper installed during the drafting and vetting of the process makes it a highly biased document with one agency getting a 'right of refusal' on what is considered valid and reliable.
Third: the document mentions one extreme and glaring weakness of the IC as a whole, which no one seems to catch. I am, frankly, astonished that after all of the layers of work, something like that gets through. It is a historical problem with the IC in that area, but to confirm it via the low confidence side (a negative in this case yielding an area of sparse or no INTEL) points to where the trucks go through in the overall statement.
Fourth: the document actually has one good section that has never been rendered to the public before, to my knowledge. That is how measures of level of confidence are processed, and has remained an obscure part of all INTEL estimates to-date.
Fifth and finally: back to what and who they don't mention - you can be absolutely, and positively accurate in what you report and yet be misleading because of the things you are not reporting on that would influence the question.
But then I am used to 'documents by committee' with self-justification for funding and bureaucratic outlook meant to obscure process and make something poor sound pretty good.... having written a few of those at a lower level on non-security matters, I know it when I see it. Damned good writing! Within limits, of course.
coldwarrior415
· 2 years ago
Page four of the released NIE goes into detail as to how terms are defined. This is a first. It is also essential that every reader of the NIE understands fully what each entails. From the televised and press media it seems that few have bothered. Had one reporter on a local channel this morning state that Iran, according to the NIE, had NO nuclear program at all.
Ajacksonian, you raise a fundamental issue.
The other item that is missed by those who were never part of any NIE writing is that situations change, players change, circumstances change, and intelligence changes, and in the end, in the summation, there may be the exact same conclusions, or the conclusions range from once being of high confidence to being the same conclusions but with low confidence.
NIE are relatively rare products. They are meant for a small audience. They are written in response to a specific request. There are often years between one NIE and a subsequent NIE, and sometimes mere months. Nothing in intelligence collection or analysis is static. It is dynamic. And being dynamic there are myriad issues, circumstances and intelligence that can change a known conclusion to a conclusion of low confidence within a heartbeat.
Finally, lack of positive intelligence does not equate with a lack of a hostile program or hostile intent on the part of an adversary.
hunter_123
· 2 years ago
Excellent and disturbing analysis. Thanks.
burt
· 2 years ago
I think most people have an unrealistic view of what the intelligence community can accomplish. Go back to the Soviet Union. The intelligence community was vilified for not predicting the failure and break up of the USSR. I think many conservatives thought it was on its last legs for many years based upon simple public economic information and could not understand what was propping it up for so long. We really did not know what the USSR's GDP was, but on the surface it appeared to be insufficient to maintain its life style. It wasn't. Among all their legion of inefficiencies was that they weren't maintaining there petroleum industry a major part of their GDP. A lot of things that come out of the intelligence community amount to a consensus vote with all the animals being equal but the pigs being more equal.
I don't know what we have on this subject. This appears to be a problem in which human intelligence would be a major or the major contributor to a correct answer. Stan Turner cut the heart out of our human intelligence capabilities three decades ago. I think that we are way behind both MEK and Israel on this one. They agree that the current NIE is wrong.
TomB
· 2 years ago
One thing the Left and leftist MSM will NEVER acknowledge is that the Iraq war actually scarred Iran and stopped their nuclear development, at least for a while. I feel this is what has really happen, before they had a second thought and moved all the stuff to a new, better hidden location. In the meantime those centrifuges are spinning...
Monkei
· 2 years ago
Iran is one of the countries that benefited MOST from an American war with Iraq and they are now the power country in the middle east ... very basic history.
txslr
· 2 years ago
You need to confer with Theresa who believes that Iran has an incentive to pretend to have nuclear weapons in order to deter agression from its neighbors.
Teresa
· 2 years ago
If you will recall, it was only recently that we decided that we were going to stay in Iraq forever and ever with our permanent bases. Iran had every reassurance from our gov't that once "Iraq stood up, we would stand down." Do you think that after many, many years of war with Iraq that they would want to undermine their efforts at deterrence at this point? Of course they continue to see Iraq as a threat to their national interests. They also see the Taliban -- their enemy -- gaining ground again in Afghanistan. If you were Iran would you want to advertise defensive weakness in that neighborhood.
The mistake that many of you make is that you think Iran is an irrational player on the world stage. They have enemies in the region and they are doing their best to maintain their soveriegnty. We may disagree with their government on most issues, but they are not suicidal.
JonPrichard
· 2 years ago
Uh, yes they are suicidal. In fact they have shown to be maniacally so. How many dead teenagers marching to battle armed with nothing more than a plastic key does it take for you to understand this? Martyrdom is their creed, their joy and that includes the leadership...especially their President.
sashal
· 2 years ago
No. terrorists are suicidal. Governments and countries are not....
txslr
· 2 years ago
What's that? Sashal's First Law of Governmental Self-Preservation? Saddam was given ample opportunity to comply or abdicate and did neither. Near the end Hitler could have attempted to reach an agreement with the West that would have saved countless German's from falling into the Soviet sphere, but believed that the German people had let him down and and needed to be punished. In Imperial Japan there was a faction that forcefully advocated fighting to the last against the Allies, even after two atomic bombs were dropped. In fact, my recollection is that there was an attempt to overthrow the Emperor in order to stop him from surrendering rather than committing national suicide.
Teresa
· 2 years ago
What the heck are you talking about? Iran has a well trained, well equipped army.
txslr
· 2 years ago
See Iran/Iraq war.
txslr
· 2 years ago
I'm having a very hard time making any sense of what you're saying. Are you suggesting that Iran suspended it's program because they are afraid of the Iraqis and we hadn't promised to stay? So you believe that Iran suspended it's program because we invaded Iraq? Hooray for Bush/Cheney! Or they want nuclear weapons to fight the Taliban?! You do know that atomic bombs make lousy counter-insurgency weapons, don't you? Or are you hypothesizing that Iran had lot's of reasons to make it's neighbors think that they had a bomb? But they weren't claiming that they had one. They insisted all along that they didn't WANT one. It looked (land still looks) as if they are PURSUING one. So is that their subterfuge? Making it look like they are pursuing a nuclear weapon while actually mothballing their program? What does that buy the rational actor? Again, a nuclear weapons PROGRAM is not a deterent. It is a reason to attack. The rational actor would make it look like they are NOT pursuing a weapon while actually pursuing one, and would then announce to the world that they had it. Not the other way around!
Math_Mage
· 2 years ago
I suggest you read The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman if you haven't already. Nations do not simply act in their own self-interest, or we would be British today.
Let's look at your analysis. It forgets that we've been discussing Iran's program for longer than the duration of the Iraq War. But anyway...
Shall we go back to 2003, when the program was abandoned?
The Taliban have been defeated, Iraq toppled. The US is on both sides of Iran, and seems ready for a pincer should they stabilize quickly in both areas. Iran knows its weapons program is p***ing off the US, and that the two biggest local threats to its security have just been eliminated. What does it do?
Well, it suspends the nuclear weapons program, obviously, to avoid p***ing us off more. One small problem: they advertise that they're still pursuing nuclear technology. This is an option completely against Iran's self-interest based on the available information. If it's to protect itself against local opponents, who might those be? If Ahmadinejad is paranoid enough to think Israel or Pakistan will launch nukes at him because he isn't pursuing nuclear technology, he's insane to begin with. And if he halted the program to avoid making the US mad, why advertise that he was keeping it? Moreover, as has been pointed out, the central premise is incorrect - stating that Iran was pursuing (but had not attained) nukes would NOT make them safer from local threats. They'd scare the bejesus out of anybody nearby, and those people might conclude that a strike was safer than letting Iran go nuclear. Furthermore, the same applies to those farther away - Israel would be mighty p***ed, and the US would be pretty mad too. So Iran's policy seems designed to antagonize the world, not to protect itself. As Teddy Roosevelt said, "Never draw unless you mean to shoot" - trying to bluff is ridiculously risky, and it doesn't even pay off for the Iranians here. Thoroughly against self-interest...which is where Tuchman comes in to explain how this is possible.
Btw, Monkei, I think TomB meant that the Iranians were "scared", not "scarred". Because they certainly don't have any scars now, but they were most likely scared just like Libya was. And that's not mutually exclusive with your comment either - scared in 2003, benefactors in 2005.
The dude
· 2 years ago
Iran didn't admit to dismantling their nuclear weapons program in 2003 for the same reason that Saddam lied to his generals and the world about his own WMD before our invasion. They are afraid of appearing weak before the world. These are not leaders of a democracy here, they are dictators. What we saw Bush do yesterday, publish a report that gives his enemies ammunition to use againt him would NEVER happen in Iran or pre-invasion Iraq.
Iran's dictators will be deposed or overthrown if they appear weak because, unlike our President, their power does not come from the people, it comes from their own strength and appearance of invincibility. Nothing makes you more invincible than having a nuclear weapon or the threat of eventually building one. It stokes nationalism and gives the Iranian Gov't a perfect "Us against them" stick to use.
Scott
· 2 years ago
I know we should never attribute to conspiracy anything that can be explained by incompetence, but incompetence does not explain the entire NIE report. As you and others have noted, the major foreign policy event that took place in 2003 was Iraq, not EU or UN pressure, not that there has been so much of either until very recently. Furthermore, any sources for such intelligence seems unlikely, based on our miserable record of gathering human intel.
That being said, it seems very unlikely that Iran would have chanced an invasion over a program they discontinued. Sure, I know, nationalism, normal Middle Eastern bravado, and so on, but the destruction of Iraq was swift and complete. Any action taken against Iran would have been the same. Personally, I doubt that the mullahs would have chanced it if they stopped already processing. They would not be chancing invasion by send Qud forces into Iraq. They would not have kidnapped the Brits, or tried to kidnap US soldiers. And so on. They were practicing a confrontational foreign policy, and their reasons seemed to be based on their nuclear weapons program.
As one Republican Presidential candidate said, the CIA has better politicians than spies. Perhaps that is true of all American intelligence efforts. Personally, I think the NIE is a lie, pure and simple. It was released for political reasons, not for reasons of national security.
jerry
· 2 years ago
I won't deny that politics is an important driver in the NIE process especially over the past four 6 years but I would not rush to judgement on the reasons for the current reversal of the 2005 assessment of Iran's nuclear program.
Most intelligence agencies are tied to an evidentiary/fact-based intelligence analysis methodology. On the face of it this would appear to be the right way to do things. Unfortunately, that is the wrong answer. There are at least two problems with this approach. First, facts are always in dispute and the community is always divided on most issues. Second, and probably more important, the “fact file” is usually volatile where new facts are brought in and old facts get re-evaluated. What you get could be termed a one-step-ahead forecast. Today we have a fact from 2003 that for whatever reason was not known until today. That fact tells us that Iran halted its program four years ago. Next year we may find a new fact that says they re-started their program in 2007 and that becomes the: high confidence fact.
Intelligence products would be more useful to the consumer if we moved from a pure evidentiary methodology to a risk-based approach. Risk based intelligence analysis would move away from definitive conclusions to an analysis of possible courses of action that an adversary might be taking based on all available evidence. As we get new evidence the ordering of the likelihood of a course action changes dynamically. I know that several intelligence analysis groups are using several alternative competing hypothesis approaches to their predictions.
jay k.
· 2 years ago
it seems to me this nie is what the one before iraq should have been; a conclusion full of caveats. only before iraq, pressure from politicians eliminated the caveats. of course the problem is that they eliminated the wrong caveats. now these same politicians have been rattling sabers and fear-mongering even though they have long known about this estimate. then they claim they didn't know about it. i'm left with one incontrovertible conclusion...the white house is either lying, or incompetent. which is the same conclusion i came to about their actions towards iraq.
txslr
· 2 years ago
This is, indeed, quite a story! However, there is not a shred of evidence to support any of it.
exhelodrvr
· 2 years ago
Israel doesn't agree, and I have more confidence in their intel services than in ours.
Teresa
· 2 years ago
Please... Israel sees Iran as a threat and wants the US to do its dirty work for them by taking that threat .
txslr
· 2 years ago
That's right. Israel sees Iran as a threat because they believe that Iran is pursing nuclear weapons.
JLawson
· 2 years ago
Got a strange idea of 'benefit', Monkei - their economy's in the crapper, their people are supposedly really pissed at the Mullocracy - just how are they 'benefiting'?
okonkolo
· 2 years ago
Sounds to me like our intel is reliable when it agrees with the policies we want to enact, and a flawed bureaucratic consensus product when it disagrees with the policies we want to enact.
exhelodrvr
· 2 years ago
Intel almost always needs to be taken with a grain of salt, because it is almost always guesswork. Definitely look at the intel reports, but take into consideration the past reliability of the organizations producing them, take into consideration the history of the entity the intel report is concerned with, take into consideration other sources, take into consideration the potential downside and potential upside of believing or not believing the report, and then make a common sense decision.
coldwarrior415
· 2 years ago
exhelodrv, in a few agencies it runs deeper than that. [Bear with me, this is a long response...you touched on a hot button issue for me, an old one, one that I had to deal with for many years.]
Having a well-placed source [agent] is what all ops officers strive to obtain. But, once spotted, assessed, developed and recruited, it doesn't end there. Unfortunately, as we saw with Curveball, it did stop there. Having ops officers conversant in the language, culture and customs of a country is a good thing. It is a better thing when that ops officer also has in depth knowledge of the subject at hand, of the inner workings of the country in question, and an ability to recall or bring up esoteric points that can easily help determine from the start the veracity of a source or the lack of veracity of that source.
In many cases this is not generally what happens. So tasking/questions for the agent are routed through an ops officer who may or may not be conversant in the subject, from an analyst thousands of miles away. The clarity of the written word on both ends comes into play as well. The results are often predictable. Well placed source. Poor or lousy or misunderstood tasking. A willingness to believe everything the source provides. Enter this information into the overall rubric and you have a problem from the start. No ops officer wants his source to turn out to be bad, or stupid...or worse, a dangle, or a paper mill. But it happens. How often it is caught before damage is done is an open question.
Iranians have a history of expansive language. They also have a rich history in "selling carpets" if they know they have an interested buyer. Back during the Iran-Iraq War I had the opportunity to be a second set of eyes on a good number of cases. It took a bit of time to understand that each source was inflating his data. Some did it to engrandize themselves, thus making for a better pay out. Others did it as a matter of habit. For other it was a simple matter of mistranslation. There were a few officers who viewed me as a pain in the butt along the way, too.
But, when essential questions were asked: such as how did you obtain this information? Describe the location where you obtained this information. Who else had access? If it was a military facility how did you, a civilian gain access? If a government facility, how did you gain access? Basic questions such as these provided ample evidence that several were passing along what they thought the ops officers wanted to hear. Having to go through the entire intel community recalling the intel and trying to expunge it from a variety of finished products was a serious task one that made for a few enemies along the way.
Common sense? Yes. Is it common? Not always. Doubting your own agent/source once an agent or source is officially "vetted" is something that falls to the wayside, often. Most left it to the CI staff to look over when they get around to it.
It takes a good, a darn good, ops officer to doubt a source and a better ops officer to doubt the info with good reason and informed skepticism. I caught hell a few times for taking a few months to debrief a subject or two before the first report was sent in from the field. It is a time consuming process, one where attention to detail has to be exercised constantly. What was said on Monday might contradict what was said on Friday; or it might open another window toward more complete information, a window previously unknown, even by the source/agent until the question was asked. The ops officer has to be his/her own reports officer and analyst in the field,otherwise they are just generalists, with a glib tongue and an ability to cozy up to foreigners. Too many for too long were of this type.
Iran difficult operationally. Lots of stuff on the periphery, but getting close-to-the-chest intelligence from Ahmadenijad's staff meetings appears nearly impossible. So we end up relying on suppositions, rational actor models, looking at what is being built or funded against what is not being built or funded, how public statements match up with what we can see on the ground, and Iranians who are willing to talk to us...anything to be able to have a source from inside Iran. But once we have that source...what then?
It is a fragile and fallible exercise, but if done properly can reveal a Rosetta Stone of intelligence, and if done improperly can provide far more chaff and noise than we have the ability to sift through.
This NIE is not a real NIE. It is a summary of an NIE. It has been sanitized. It is general in its presentation. But it does contain certain elements that lend credence to its judgements.
However, it is a start point. It is a metric of what we know today...or last month, actually.
All that said, take the eleven or so intelligence organizations that are members of the Intelligence Community. Take all their reporting on the subject. Keep in mind a cultural desire to have your product be the gem, above all the rest. Let the turf battles begin...as the review process gets underway.
Frankly, right now, we have too many intelligence organizations involved in foreign intelligence. The creation of the ODNI has removed the "Central" from the Central Intelligence Agency. it is now just one of many. There is NO central in our intelligence efforts since the implementation of the 9-11 Commission recommendations and the establishment of the ODNI. Too many intel organizations. We need less, fewer, more focused, with the best of the crop and those with solid credentials and experience doing the collection and analysis...not having every Cabinet Department and every branch of service and DoD running their independent shops.
Until we realize and admit that the ODNI is an impediment, and that our rush "to do something" after 9-11, and Congessional demands on the intelligence community are far from a help, we will continue to have to deal with an overlarge bureaucracy and too many officials stumbling over themselves and each other trying to get answers from essentially the same sources. This is no way to run national intellgience.
jerry
· 2 years ago
Coldwarrior:
All the creation of the DNI did was to "inflate" the power of the old Community Management Staff that used to be run by the DCIA in his hat as DCI. Nothing else has changed except we separated CMS from CIA. If we really wanted a serious intelligence reform act we would have reorganized our intelligence bureaucracy into a military intelligence component, a political/economic intelligence component and a clandestine service. The “MIA” would fulfill the function of an all-source intel agency supporting DoD, the Joint Staff and the COCOMS. It would combine the analytic components of DIA, NGA and NSA into one entity. We could have beefed up State INR to do the same thing for the rest of the government and combined clandestine operations for all agencies into a new OSS. Instead we created another “Czar” to oversee an alphabet soup of agencies who continue to fight for dollars, attention and prestige. It’s not a pretty picture.
coldwarrior415
· 2 years ago
All the creation of the ODNI was to take away nearly half of the serving ops officers from CIA to man the ODNI staff and management, added several layers of approvals and review for all intelligence operations, and made the entire IC more not less political along the way, and made the chasm between officer in the field and the national security staff at the White HOuse the ultimate customer, wider, much wider.
No, it is not a pretty picture.
After 9-11 the CIA became the sole target in the gunsights. A little scrutiny wnet to the FBI. But the rest?
The other then eleven agencies were pretty much immune from scrutiny, most never heard of them, most still have no clue as to these other intelligence entitites.
We have a National HUMINT Service (the former Directorate of Operations, my old stomping grounds) but there is still a large disconnect between gaining efficiencies and gaining territory. I am perhaps one of the few former-Agency types who is very happy with the current DCI, Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden, who has begun in earnest to reinvigorate the HUMINT side and is a no nonsense leader. He is also approachable, intelligent , and willing to listen.
I came to CQ the first time a few years ago to defend a friend of mine, an Army officer, whoi was one of the best Army intellgience operators I have ever encountered. We had a long history of working across agency and DoD lines in order to accomplish some very important programs. But this relationship on the professional and personal level was the exception,. far from the norm.
Prior to Hayden's arrival at CIA there was a strong reluctance to accept ANY of the lessor operators/officers from any non-CIA entity as an equal. Under Hayden, I am informed, this sort of nonsense has stopped. It is a step forward. Hayden did a bang up job over at NSA and in a number of prior assignments. He understands intelligence collection from across all "INT's" not just HUMINT. He also needs to be able to select and draft operators from other agwencies and make them part of a singular unit of HUMINT activities. He also needs to address, tackle, take on, the large number of independent agencies in the IC.
Hopefully he can make CIA leaner and meaner and more adaptable and make more seamles the interagency working level doers, while holding the upper level appointees at bay.
But, the bottom line is a more streamlined intelligence establishment...we need it more now than ever.
okonkolo
· 2 years ago
Thank you for your very illuminating posts.
exhelodrvr
· 2 years ago
Thank you; I agree completely.
jerry
· 2 years ago
Okonkolo:
So, If next year the IC reports that Iran has restarted its program you would be the first person to advocate bombing Iran?
exhelodrvr
· 2 years ago
Sorry if someone else has posted this thought already, but if Iran did actually stop their nuke weapons program in 2003, then clearly a significant factor was what was going on in Iraq. This, of course, further validates the President's course of action, as "better behavior" from nations such as Iran was one of the specified hoped-for results. Combine that with North Korea's recent actions (assuming that they can be taken at face value), and you have some pretty powerful evidence that the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do. I don't expect that to come out of any Democratic mouths (other than Joe Lieberman) but hopefully that can be used by the Republicans in the near future.
Neo
· 2 years ago
The part of all of this that many don’t seem to understand that the NIE changes nothing in regard to the sanctions, since they are based on the actions or inactions in regard to the uranium enrichment program that the Iranians have admitted to having and are now running, but whose purpose is still not completely clear.
None of the sanctions have anything to do with a nuclear weapons program that may or may not be operational.
the Cannuck
· 2 years ago
Can't access your site to comment
Math_Mage
· 2 years ago
Log in to Disqus.
infidel65
· 2 years ago
Ed, you ask "Why did the mullahs refuse to comply with UN Security Council resolutions and accept trade and diplomatic sanctions rather than allow verification at key sites?" The same question was asked about Iraq. If they didn't have WMD, why didn't they comply with UN resolutions? One possible reason for Iran's apparent stubbornness is that they didn't want the world to know they EVER had a nuclear weapons program. According to the report, Iran had only suspended its program. They didn't want the UN inspectors to dismantle their existing facilities. I'm just playing devil's advocate here. Today, the left's position is: "Bush lied, Iran never had a nuclear weapons program, and anyway, they suspended it in 2003." This report has made it politcally impossible to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons. If Iran did suspend its program (just after Saddam was captured) they have certainly regained their confidence, thanks to the State Department, various elements of the US intelligence community, the UN, EU, leftist news media, and last, but not least, the Democrat Party.
Teresa
· 2 years ago
I agree with Ed on one point. It is clear that Iran -- like Iraq -- has a strategic interest in pretending to have weapons that it does not have in order to deterr aggression from its neighbors.
Even if you believe that the NIE is wrong, how can you justify Bush ratcheting up the rhetoric in the last year against Iran? Saying that we are heading for WWIII? If he believed the NIE was wrong, then what evidence was he basing his threats on?
That press conference was an embarrasment to the nation yesterday. Do you really believe that when the President was told that new information had come to light about Iran that he did not bother to ask what it was? Or that when Condolezza Rice and Stephen Hadley heard the President and VP talking about WWIII that they did not go to them and say, "wait,,, some new information is going to come out that makes you look wrong on this." Either the president is a liar or his staff is completely incompetant.
sashal
· 2 years ago
Teresa. . Neocon warmongers in short: Iran should be punished when we think they’re developing nuclear weapons, and Iran should be punished when we know that they aren’t. Iran should always be punished. That pretty well sums up their views. One can imagine that they would say the same thing if Iran gave up the uranium enrichment altogether: “They might start up a program in the future, so they’re still a threat, if only in my mind.”
txslr
· 2 years ago
You'll have to excuse me for not wanting to draw conclusions regarding the administration based on what you can or cannot imagine.
Sansoucy
· 2 years ago
Leftist peace-at-any-pricers in short: Iran must not suffer any consequences of any kind when the NIE says they're beavering away on nukes and Iran must not suffer any consequences of any kind when they're merely supporting non-nuclear Islamist terror the world over. Iran must never be punished, at all, ever, regardless of [anything here]. One can imagine these peaceniks would say the same thing if Iran actually nuked someone, "Oh, dear, we mustn't respond. That would be ever so militaristic, jingoistic, and ism-based."
txslr
· 2 years ago
You are not making any sense. Iraq may have had an incentive to pretend to have WMD's to deter Iran. With Iraq out of the equation Iran has an incentive to protect themselves from---Kuwait? Besides, how much deterence value can you get from pretending to have a nuclear weapons effort but no weapons? You are not deterring attack, you are inviting it.
Finally, the suggestion that someone would or should have told the president to change policy based on information that would be acquired at some time in the future is ridiculous in a universe in which time moves in one direction (i.e. forward).
Teresa
· 2 years ago
You are forgetting that Bush made his comments about WWIII AFTER he admits that Mike McConnell came to his office and said they had new information. Bush -- according to his story -- just did not bother to ask what the new information was.
JonPrichard
· 2 years ago
You morons are only focusing on one aspect of the Iranian problem, that is the potential for them to have the Bomb. What about 30 years of worldwide Islamic revolution with Hamas and Hezbollah as Iran's spearhead? Worldwide terrorism is laid at the feet of the Mullahs. In truth the West has been at war with Islam since the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979.
txslr
· 2 years ago
Mike McConnell told Bush they had new information. At that point no one knew how the intelligence community would interpret it. There are 16 intelligence agencies involved in processing this information and reaching a joint opinion regarding what it means. In the current NIE several of those agencies dissented on the conclusion in the report. The report itself indicates only moderate confidence that Iran has not restarted its weapons program. As recently as four months ago one of the primary authors of this report testified before Congress that "We assess that Tehran is determined to develop nuclear weapons--despite its international obligations and international pressure. We assess that Tehran is determined to develop nuclear weapons--despite its international obligations and international pressure. "
If President Bush asked Mike McConnell what the information was, McConnell's honest answer would have had to be "We don't know yet." This does not make Bush a liar nor McConnell incompetent.
sashal
· 2 years ago
you do remember weapon's inspector were in Iraq right before invasion, do you ?
Somebody, named George did not want to let them finish the job...
hunter_123
· 2 years ago
I doubt if this report is accurate at all. Since 2003, Iran has been very active with North Korea in developing weapons systems and nuclear capability. The quality of this estimate is about the same as the one on December 6, 1941, or that of September 10, 2001. We are deliberately ignoring the evidence, and interpretting it to fit the agendas, bigotry and incompetence of the analysts who put it together. And unfortunately, their agenda does not include robustly defending America, its interests or allies. The CIA has proven that over its entire history.
Monkei
· 2 years ago
By all means then we need to invade both countries and eliminate the threat. It's working well for us already ... let's roll.
TomB
· 2 years ago
I don't agree. We should definitely wait and see. It was working for us so well in the past.
Math_Mage
· 2 years ago
Except we don't need to invade North Korea, because thanks to Israel's action against Syria's reactor (most likely) North Korea capitulated.
I really think the US has a good thing going here. Act like the rational party, and play good cop/bad cop with Israel.
They should go over to Iran and say, "Well, we're just going to negotiate, and that's fine, but those Israelis, they're really loose cannons and it'd be a real shame if they suddenly decided to start attacking you over what we both know is nothing. Seriously, we don't know what they're going to do. Anyway, how's your meal?"
[/joke]
MrLynn
· 2 years ago
There may be more (or less) to this latest NIE report than meets the eye:
<quote>. . . Newsmax sources in Tehran believe that Washington has fallen for “a deliberate disinformation campaign” cooked up by the Revolutionary Guards, who laundered fake information and fed it to the United States through Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers posing as senior diplomats in Europe.</quote>
All Comments
I would remind you that it was inexplicable why Sadaam Hussein didn't allow the IAEA to verify that *he* didn't have WMD. Why sit there and get invaded when you don't even have anything substantial? The answer to this is fairly simple. Dictators aren't logical. There was a huge effort during the Cold War to understand Soviet psyche. It's just incredibly hard. One can tell that logic is not one of the strong points of such people if they are in such a position in the first place.
This is the dillema we face: Our intelligence communities, within 2 years, distribute two completely contradictory findings, each one with "high confidence". No one has to explain the change. We are not to know who got it so wrong the first time (or the 2nd?). We are simply told to accept that the information we use to determine our future security has changed 360 degrees...move on.
Madness. And Maddening!
Which message would I be acting on throughout the evening?
The truth is we can not really know. There are people who see this as an effort to let Iran off the hook and undermine the Bush administration, maybe it is. However, if the Iranians do produce a nuclear bomb in the near future these intel people are going to look even more suspect than they already do. I am not sure these career people would risk that.
The Democrats will try to use this to their advantage, no doubt, but Republicans can do the same thing if they simply make the point that without some saber rattling and pressure the Iranians would probably have their bomb already.
I do think that the Iranians might be waiting in the hopes that someone like Barak Obama wins the election in 2008, then they know they will be home free. This might be why they have jacked around with everyone. They are waiting to see which way the wind blows.
It is also true that a lot of the information we had about Saddam and his stockpiles came from Iraqi dissidents who may have had their own agenda, it could be that some of the information the NIE used in the 2005 report came from the same sort of people in Iran. If they want to take out the mullahs, they need to do it themselves. It has gotten to the point where no one knows what to believe anymore because of the all agendas out there.
But I do think the Iranians are dangerous and we need to keep the pressure on them.
The GOP lost their ability to use this excuse when all the "real" facts of WMD's were exposed along with the "mushroom cloud" reasoning. Good luck trying to get the "be very scared" reasoning past anyone other than the 30 percent of Americans that remain scared and devoted to this administration and president.
So, you can't claim historical ignorance, you must remember what had happened 4-5 years ago, unless you are 3 year old...
or, may be your only source for the info is FOX news and Rush radio show...
And if we are talking about the same time span, right before the war began, then we understand each other, my friend.
Here you go( from the UN report) :
UN weapons inspectors began their work in Iraq November 27 and left March 18. Iraq submitted a declaration containing information about its weapons of mass destruction December 7, as required by UN Security Council Resolution 1441. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conducted 237 inspections at 148 sites, including 27 sites not previously inspected. UNMOVIC inspectors conducted 731 inspections at 411 sites, including 88 sites not previously inspected. Of those inspections, 22 percent were related to chemical weapons, 28 percent to biological weapons, and 30 percent to missiles. The remaining 20 percent were multidisciplinary inspections, involving experts from each disarmament area.
UNMOVIC carried out a total of eight aerial surveillance and monitoring missions by helicopter and 16 reconnaissance missions using U-2 and Mirage aircraft between mid-February and mid-March 2003.
Inspectors also conducted 14 private interviews with Iraqi scientists, out of 54 that they had requested, between January and March 2003. Iraq provided 31 lists of Iraqi scientists to UNMOVIC, five of which contained the names of experts involved in the handling and destruction of prohibited weapons materials. Some of these scientists were involved in destroying anthrax—one of the most important outstanding disarmament issues—but inspectors were withdrawn before those scientists could be interviewed. UNMOVIC considered such interviews to be a critical source of information, especially when, as Iraq claimed, documentation did not exist to support Baghdad’s assertion that it had destroyed its prohibited weapons.
The IAEA found no evidence that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Based on information in the May 30 report and previously issued documents, UNMOVIC inspectors:
Supervised the destruction of 72 prohibited al Samoud-2 missiles and dozens of associated warheads. The May 30 report said Iraq destroyed 74 warheads and that 25 missiles and 38 warheads remained to be destroyed, but those numbers differ from previous UN statements.
Supervised the destruction of three al Samoud-2 missile launchers but said six remained to be destroyed.
Supervised the destruction of two casting chambers capable of producing motors for prohibited missiles.
Discovered 231 illegal Volga missile engines. Iraq had declared that it had imported only 131 such engines, but the report places the total number at 380.
Supervised the destruction of five engines—presumably Volga engines—for al Samoud-2 missiles. The May 30 report, however, stated that 326 remained to be destroyed and did not explain the apparent discrepancy between the number of engines imported and those slated for destruction.
Discovered 14 empty 122-millimeter rocket warheads that could be used to deliver chemical weapons. Iraq notified UNMOVIC that it had discovered another four warheads.
Supervised the destruction of 14 155-millimeter shells containing mustard gas that had been found by the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1997 at a declared location. UNSCOM had emptied four of the shells but not destroyed them.
Discovered a component of a cluster sub-munition designed to deliver chemical or biological weapons.
Discovered fuel spray tanks modified for possible use in delivering chemical or biological agents.
Found and destroyed a small quantity of a precursor chemical for the production of mustard agent. The May 30 report stated the quantity was 500 milliliters, but a February UNMOVIC report placed the amount at one liter.
Verified Iraq’s declarations that it had reinstalled eight pieces of prohibited chemical equipment. UNMOVIC decided that Iraq should destroy the equipment, but the destruction was not carried out before UNMOVIC left the country.
Observed Iraqi efforts to recover physical evidence of 157 R-400 bombs, built for the delivery of biological agents, that Iraq claimed to have destroyed and apparently buried in 1991. According to the May 30 report, the excavations accounted for 104 bombs, which, combined with the 24 bombs excavated by UNSCOM at the same site, accounted for 128 munitions. The liquid contents of two bombs UNMOVIC excavated tested positive for anthrax.
Were unable to determine whether Iraq had pursued an unmanned aerial vehicle program to deliver chemical and biological weapons.
Discovered no mobile facilities for producing weapons.
Unfortunately the neoconservative views were for the regime change in Iraq and democracy revolution (Trotsky methodology) throughout the ME
The official U.S. policy of regime change in Iraq was put in place in 1998 in the Iraq Liberation Act. It was signed by Bill Clinton and stated: "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."
In the end, Saddam had precious little. He had the infrastructure, had the monetary menas, had the intent....but putting myself in the ultimate cat bird seat, would it have been a better chocie to do nothing? Allow the UN inspections to disintegrate? Allow for the Chinese and Russians and French, whose governments had a vested interest in maintainign Saddam in Baghdad to further erode the sanctions or end them entirely? They all circumvented them, anyway.
An absence of positive intelligence on an adversary does not equate with a lack of intent on the part of that same adversary.
It is easy when you have no stake in the game to make calls and raises.
Any US President, be it Clinton or Bush, or Reagan or Truman, sometimes has to make choices that involve more than the present. They do have a stake in the game. There is often little time for second-guessing. Why provide an advantage to an aversary by refusal to committ to any course of action, remaining neutered in the process by that inaction?
And would we really have known what the conclusions would have been had we not gone into Iraq? Guesstimates and fingers-crossed hope is no way to exercise authority over our armed forces nor our foreign policy.
As for Iran, since 1979 they have not exactly demonstrated a clear and consitent record of complying with even the basic norms of international law, and have made veru public statements about their intent. They have the wherewithal to do many things, many of them lethal. Are we to believe only their statements that they "only kid, really, just kidding" or their statements that they want to destroy the Great Satan and are more than willing to assist anyone who can help them accomplish that goal? Which set of statements and actions would be the best choice to believe?
Your position is understandable and quite reasonable if we disregard humanitarian factors involved...
I was against intevention in Iraq because I realized that they are not and can not be a threat to the USA, and regime change for whatever purposes is not our business.
Let’s ask a different : is it the proper business of the United States government to use its military so that people in other nations can be liberated from repressive governments? Quite simply, no, it isn’t. That isn’t what our government exists to do. It should use its military to defend our country, any allies with which we may have defense treaties and vital resources. It cannot be worthwhile to liberate other peoples because it is a kind of war that not only goes far beyond what our government is supposed to be doing and engages in conflicts that it has no right to involve our people in, but also because it quite clearly harms the United States in the process.
Aggressive war cannot be moral and it cannot be just. To choose war, as our government indeed did, is to choose to unleash all the horrors of war on people who have done no lasting, grave or permanent harm to us. They may or may not be wretched, awful people. They may or may not be tyrants. Whether they are or not is actually irrelevant to the question of whether our government has the right to commit aggression against another state. The bottom line is that the attacked state has done nothing to deserve our attack on it. How much less, then, do the civilians killed in the process deserve it? How can unleashing hell on earth without cause ever be worthwhile? It cannot be.
"Let’s ask a different : is it the proper business of the United States government to use its military so that people in other nations can be liberated from repressive governments? Quite simply, no, it isn’t."
It may well be. It has proven so in the past. There are times when liberating a nation from a despot can lead to better overall national security in the long run. Not adressing that despot can lead to later, more involved, and more costly threats to our own national securrity. So, for that matter, I find your position to be just a bit off the mark.
Was the Iraq War a legal war? That question has been asked many many times. Congress authorized it. Congress provided funding. The United Nations had a dozen or more Resolutions calling for compliance. There was ample evidence that Saddam was not exactly a nice person. There was eveidence that the oil-for-food regime was coming apart at the seams and Saddam was gaming us. other nations in the region looked toward Saddam as another Saladin, more a symbol than an actual Saladin, but in that realm, having a Saddam, or any other major leader freely and openly sticking his finger in our eye, and the UN as well, made for an environment that just about any polayer in the region knew for a fact that we were powerless to do anything at all about Saddam...to include Saddam himself.
So...our not doing anything about Saddam for over a decade made it far more difficult for us to have any say or input in a region that was/is vital to our national security.
Given the decade prior to our moving in to Iraq, I'd say, honestly, that removing Saddam was a darn good first step.
First the study is highly and strictly delimited: observe its title.
Second: the methodology and gatekeeper installed during the drafting and vetting of the process makes it a highly biased document with one agency getting a 'right of refusal' on what is considered valid and reliable.
Third: the document mentions one extreme and glaring weakness of the IC as a whole, which no one seems to catch. I am, frankly, astonished that after all of the layers of work, something like that gets through. It is a historical problem with the IC in that area, but to confirm it via the low confidence side (a negative in this case yielding an area of sparse or no INTEL) points to where the trucks go through in the overall statement.
Fourth: the document actually has one good section that has never been rendered to the public before, to my knowledge. That is how measures of level of confidence are processed, and has remained an obscure part of all INTEL estimates to-date.
Fifth and finally: back to what and who they don't mention - you can be absolutely, and positively accurate in what you report and yet be misleading because of the things you are not reporting on that would influence the question.
But then I am used to 'documents by committee' with self-justification for funding and bureaucratic outlook meant to obscure process and make something poor sound pretty good.... having written a few of those at a lower level on non-security matters, I know it when I see it. Damned good writing! Within limits, of course.
Ajacksonian, you raise a fundamental issue.
The other item that is missed by those who were never part of any NIE writing is that situations change, players change, circumstances change, and intelligence changes, and in the end, in the summation, there may be the exact same conclusions, or the conclusions range from once being of high confidence to being the same conclusions but with low confidence.
NIE are relatively rare products. They are meant for a small audience. They are written in response to a specific request. There are often years between one NIE and a subsequent NIE, and sometimes mere months. Nothing in intelligence collection or analysis is static. It is dynamic. And being dynamic there are myriad issues, circumstances and intelligence that can change a known conclusion to a conclusion of low confidence within a heartbeat.
Finally, lack of positive intelligence does not equate with a lack of a hostile program or hostile intent on the part of an adversary.
I don't know what we have on this subject. This appears to be a problem in which human intelligence would be a major or the major contributor to a correct answer. Stan Turner cut the heart out of our human intelligence capabilities three decades ago. I think that we are way behind both MEK and Israel on this one. They agree that the current NIE is wrong.
once "Iraq stood up, we would stand down." Do you think that after many, many years
of war with Iraq that they would want to undermine their efforts at deterrence at this
point? Of course they continue to see Iraq as a threat to their national interests.
They also see the Taliban -- their enemy -- gaining ground again in Afghanistan.
If you were Iran would you want to advertise defensive weakness in that neighborhood.
The mistake that many of you make is that you think Iran is an irrational player on the
world stage. They have enemies in the region and they are doing their best to
maintain their soveriegnty. We may disagree with their government on most issues,
but they are not suicidal.
terrorists are suicidal.
Governments and countries are not....
Let's look at your analysis. It forgets that we've been discussing Iran's program for longer than the duration of the Iraq War. But anyway...
Shall we go back to 2003, when the program was abandoned?
The Taliban have been defeated, Iraq toppled. The US is on both sides of Iran, and seems ready for a pincer should they stabilize quickly in both areas. Iran knows its weapons program is p***ing off the US, and that the two biggest local threats to its security have just been eliminated. What does it do?
Well, it suspends the nuclear weapons program, obviously, to avoid p***ing us off more. One small problem: they advertise that they're still pursuing nuclear technology. This is an option completely against Iran's self-interest based on the available information. If it's to protect itself against local opponents, who might those be? If Ahmadinejad is paranoid enough to think Israel or Pakistan will launch nukes at him because he isn't pursuing nuclear technology, he's insane to begin with. And if he halted the program to avoid making the US mad, why advertise that he was keeping it? Moreover, as has been pointed out, the central premise is incorrect - stating that Iran was pursuing (but had not attained) nukes would NOT make them safer from local threats. They'd scare the bejesus out of anybody nearby, and those people might conclude that a strike was safer than letting Iran go nuclear. Furthermore, the same applies to those farther away - Israel would be mighty p***ed, and the US would be pretty mad too. So Iran's policy seems designed to antagonize the world, not to protect itself. As Teddy Roosevelt said, "Never draw unless you mean to shoot" - trying to bluff is ridiculously risky, and it doesn't even pay off for the Iranians here. Thoroughly against self-interest...which is where Tuchman comes in to explain how this is possible.
Btw, Monkei, I think TomB meant that the Iranians were "scared", not "scarred". Because they certainly don't have any scars now, but they were most likely scared just like Libya was. And that's not mutually exclusive with your comment either - scared in 2003, benefactors in 2005.
Iran's dictators will be deposed or overthrown if they appear weak because, unlike our President, their power does not come from the people, it comes from their own strength and appearance of invincibility. Nothing makes you more invincible than having a nuclear weapon or the threat of eventually building one. It stokes nationalism and gives the Iranian Gov't a perfect "Us against them" stick to use.
That being said, it seems very unlikely that Iran would have chanced an invasion over a program they discontinued. Sure, I know, nationalism, normal Middle Eastern bravado, and so on, but the destruction of Iraq was swift and complete. Any action taken against Iran would have been the same. Personally, I doubt that the mullahs would have chanced it if they stopped already processing. They would not be chancing invasion by send Qud forces into Iraq. They would not have kidnapped the Brits, or tried to kidnap US soldiers. And so on. They were practicing a confrontational foreign policy, and their reasons seemed to be based on their nuclear weapons program.
As one Republican Presidential candidate said, the CIA has better politicians than spies. Perhaps that is true of all American intelligence efforts. Personally, I think the NIE is a lie, pure and simple. It was released for political reasons, not for reasons of national security.
Most intelligence agencies are tied to an evidentiary/fact-based intelligence analysis methodology. On the face of it this would appear to be the right way to do things. Unfortunately, that is the wrong answer. There are at least two problems with this approach. First, facts are always in dispute and the community is always divided on most issues. Second, and probably more important, the “fact file” is usually volatile where new facts are brought in and old facts get re-evaluated. What you get could be termed a one-step-ahead forecast. Today we have a fact from 2003 that for whatever reason was not known until today. That fact tells us that Iran halted its program four years ago. Next year we may find a new fact that says they re-started their program in 2007 and that becomes the: high confidence fact.
Intelligence products would be more useful to the consumer if we moved from a pure evidentiary methodology to a risk-based approach. Risk based intelligence analysis would move away from definitive conclusions to an analysis of possible courses of action that an adversary might be taking based on all available evidence. As we get new evidence the ordering of the likelihood of a course action changes dynamically. I know that several intelligence analysis groups are using several alternative competing hypothesis approaches to their predictions.
Having a well-placed source [agent] is what all ops officers strive to obtain. But, once spotted, assessed, developed and recruited, it doesn't end there. Unfortunately, as we saw with Curveball, it did stop there. Having ops officers conversant in the language, culture and customs of a country is a good thing. It is a better thing when that ops officer also has in depth knowledge of the subject at hand, of the inner workings of the country in question, and an ability to recall or bring up esoteric points that can easily help determine from the start the veracity of a source or the lack of veracity of that source.
In many cases this is not generally what happens. So tasking/questions for the agent are routed through an ops officer who may or may not be conversant in the subject, from an analyst thousands of miles away. The clarity of the written word on both ends comes into play as well. The results are often predictable. Well placed source. Poor or lousy or misunderstood tasking. A willingness to believe everything the source provides. Enter this information into the overall rubric and you have a problem from the start. No ops officer wants his source to turn out to be bad, or stupid...or worse, a dangle, or a paper mill. But it happens. How often it is caught before damage is done is an open question.
Iranians have a history of expansive language. They also have a rich history in "selling carpets" if they know they have an interested buyer. Back during the Iran-Iraq War I had the opportunity to be a second set of eyes on a good number of cases. It took a bit of time to understand that each source was inflating his data. Some did it to engrandize themselves, thus making for a better pay out. Others did it as a matter of habit. For other it was a simple matter of mistranslation. There were a few officers who viewed me as a pain in the butt along the way, too.
But, when essential questions were asked: such as how did you obtain this information? Describe the location where you obtained this information. Who else had access? If it was a military facility how did you, a civilian gain access? If a government facility, how did you gain access? Basic questions such as these provided ample evidence that several were passing along what they thought the ops officers wanted to hear. Having to go through the entire intel community recalling the intel and trying to expunge it from a variety of finished products was a serious task one that made for a few enemies along the way.
Common sense? Yes. Is it common? Not always. Doubting your own agent/source once an agent or source is officially "vetted" is something that falls to the wayside, often. Most left it to the CI staff to look over when they get around to it.
It takes a good, a darn good, ops officer to doubt a source and a better ops officer to doubt the info with good reason and informed skepticism. I caught hell a few times for taking a few months to debrief a subject or two before the first report was sent in from the field. It is a time consuming process, one where attention to detail has to be exercised constantly. What was said on Monday might contradict what was said on Friday; or it might open another window toward more complete information, a window previously unknown, even by the source/agent until the question was asked. The ops officer has to be his/her own reports officer and analyst in the field,otherwise they are just generalists, with a glib tongue and an ability to cozy up to foreigners. Too many for too long were of this type.
Iran difficult operationally. Lots of stuff on the periphery, but getting close-to-the-chest intelligence from Ahmadenijad's staff meetings appears nearly impossible. So we end up relying on suppositions, rational actor models, looking at what is being built or funded against what is not being built or funded, how public statements match up with what we can see on the ground, and Iranians who are willing to talk to us...anything to be able to have a source from inside Iran. But once we have that source...what then?
It is a fragile and fallible exercise, but if done properly can reveal a Rosetta Stone of intelligence, and if done improperly can provide far more chaff and noise than we have the ability to sift through.
This NIE is not a real NIE. It is a summary of an NIE. It has been sanitized. It is general in its presentation. But it does contain certain elements that lend credence to its judgements.
However, it is a start point. It is a metric of what we know today...or last month, actually.
All that said, take the eleven or so intelligence organizations that are members of the Intelligence Community. Take all their reporting on the subject. Keep in mind a cultural desire to have your product be the gem, above all the rest. Let the turf battles begin...as the review process gets underway.
Frankly, right now, we have too many intelligence organizations involved in foreign intelligence. The creation of the ODNI has removed the "Central" from the Central Intelligence Agency. it is now just one of many. There is NO central in our intelligence efforts since the implementation of the 9-11 Commission recommendations and the establishment of the ODNI. Too many intel organizations. We need less, fewer, more focused, with the best of the crop and those with solid credentials and experience doing the collection and analysis...not having every Cabinet Department and every branch of service and DoD running their independent shops.
Until we realize and admit that the ODNI is an impediment, and that our rush "to do something" after 9-11, and Congessional demands on the intelligence community are far from a help, we will continue to have to deal with an overlarge bureaucracy and too many officials stumbling over themselves and each other trying to get answers from essentially the same sources. This is no way to run national intellgience.
All the creation of the DNI did was to "inflate" the power of the old Community Management Staff that used to be run by the DCIA in his hat as DCI. Nothing else has changed except we separated CMS from CIA. If we really wanted a serious intelligence reform act we would have reorganized our intelligence bureaucracy into a military intelligence component, a political/economic intelligence component and a clandestine service. The “MIA” would fulfill the function of an all-source intel agency supporting DoD, the Joint Staff and the COCOMS. It would combine the analytic components of DIA, NGA and NSA into one entity. We could have beefed up State INR to do the same thing for the rest of the government and combined clandestine operations for all agencies into a new OSS. Instead we created another “Czar” to oversee an alphabet soup of agencies who continue to fight for dollars, attention and prestige. It’s not a pretty picture.
No, it is not a pretty picture.
After 9-11 the CIA became the sole target in the gunsights. A little scrutiny wnet to the FBI. But the rest?
The other then eleven agencies were pretty much immune from scrutiny, most never heard of them, most still have no clue as to these other intelligence entitites.
We have a National HUMINT Service (the former Directorate of Operations, my old stomping grounds) but there is still a large disconnect between gaining efficiencies and gaining territory. I am perhaps one of the few former-Agency types who is very happy with the current DCI, Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden, who has begun in earnest to reinvigorate the HUMINT side and is a no nonsense leader. He is also approachable, intelligent , and willing to listen.
I came to CQ the first time a few years ago to defend a friend of mine, an Army officer, whoi was one of the best Army intellgience operators I have ever encountered. We had a long history of working across agency and DoD lines in order to accomplish some very important programs. But this relationship on the professional and personal level was the exception,. far from the norm.
Prior to Hayden's arrival at CIA there was a strong reluctance to accept ANY of the lessor operators/officers from any non-CIA entity as an equal. Under Hayden, I am informed, this sort of nonsense has stopped. It is a step forward. Hayden did a bang up job over at NSA and in a number of prior assignments. He understands intelligence collection from across all "INT's" not just HUMINT. He also needs to be able to select and draft operators from other agwencies and make them part of a singular unit of HUMINT activities. He also needs to address, tackle, take on, the large number of independent agencies in the IC.
Hopefully he can make CIA leaner and meaner and more adaptable and make more seamles the interagency working level doers, while holding the upper level appointees at bay.
But, the bottom line is a more streamlined intelligence establishment...we need it more now than ever.
So, If next year the IC reports that Iran has restarted its program you would be the first person to advocate bombing Iran?
None of the sanctions have anything to do with a nuclear weapons program that may or may not be operational.
Today, the left's position is: "Bush lied, Iran never had a nuclear weapons program, and anyway, they suspended it in 2003."
This report has made it politcally impossible to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons. If Iran did suspend its program (just after Saddam was captured) they have certainly regained their confidence, thanks to the State Department, various elements of the US intelligence community, the UN, EU, leftist news media, and last, but not least, the Democrat Party.
Even if you believe that the NIE is wrong, how can you justify Bush ratcheting up the rhetoric in the last year against Iran? Saying that we are heading for WWIII? If he believed the NIE was wrong, then what evidence was he basing his threats on?
That press conference was an embarrasment to the nation yesterday. Do you really believe that when the President was told that new information had come to light about Iran that he did not bother to ask what it was? Or that when Condolezza Rice and Stephen Hadley heard the President and VP talking about WWIII that they did not go to them and say, "wait,,, some new information is going to come out that makes you look wrong on this." Either the president is a liar or his staff is completely incompetant.
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Neocon warmongers in short:
Iran should be punished when we think they’re developing nuclear weapons, and Iran should be punished when we know that they aren’t. Iran should always be punished. That pretty well sums up their views. One can imagine that they would say the same thing if Iran gave up the uranium enrichment altogether: “They might start up a program in the future, so they’re still a threat, if only in my mind.”
Iran must not suffer any consequences of any kind when the NIE says they're beavering away on nukes and Iran must not suffer any consequences of any kind when they're merely supporting non-nuclear Islamist terror the world over. Iran must never be punished, at all, ever, regardless of [anything here]. One can imagine these peaceniks would say the same thing if Iran actually nuked someone, "Oh, dear, we mustn't respond. That would be ever so militaristic, jingoistic, and ism-based."
Finally, the suggestion that someone would or should have told the president to change policy based on information that would be acquired at some time in the future is ridiculous in a universe in which time moves in one direction (i.e. forward).
to his story -- just did not bother to ask what the new information was.
If President Bush asked Mike McConnell what the information was, McConnell's honest answer would have had to be "We don't know yet." This does not make Bush a liar nor McConnell incompetent.
Somebody, named George did not want to let them finish the job...
Since 2003, Iran has been very active with North Korea in developing weapons systems and nuclear capability. The quality of this estimate is about the same as the one on December 6, 1941, or that of September 10, 2001. We are deliberately ignoring the evidence, and interpretting it to fit the agendas, bigotry and incompetence of the analysts who put it together. And unfortunately, their agenda does not include robustly defending America, its interests or allies.
The CIA has proven that over its entire history.
I really think the US has a good thing going here. Act like the rational party, and play good cop/bad cop with Israel.
They should go over to Iran and say, "Well, we're just going to negotiate, and that's fine, but those Israelis, they're really loose cannons and it'd be a real shame if they suddenly decided to start attacking you over what we both know is nothing. Seriously, we don't know what they're going to do. Anyway, how's your meal?"
[/joke]
<quote>. . . Newsmax sources in Tehran believe that Washington has fallen for “a deliberate disinformation campaign” cooked up by the Revolutionary Guards, who laundered fake information and fed it to the United States through Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers posing as senior diplomats in Europe.</quote>
From here:
http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/iran_nukes/200...
/Mr Lynn
There was an Edit button on a comment I made in another thread; seems to have disappeared.
/Mr L