Soldiers pay in blood

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG17Ak01.html

The White House suddenly finds itself in an unaccustomed position, that is, on the defensive. The cause is the statement, now conceded to have been false, that President George W Bush made in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was searching for uranium in Niger. This admission, and the circumstances surrounding the placement of false intelligence in the president's speech, has produced an uproar that shows no sign of going away because it gives his opponents an opportunity to smell blood. This should not be surprising. After all, the same thing happened to Prime Minister Tony Blair over deficiencies in British intelligence analysis and assessment of Iraqi capabilities.

But it would be a profound mistake to dismiss these charges as merely reflecting partisan wrangling. The issue here is not the failures of either the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or of British intelligence to get Iraq's nuclear program right. Neither should this episode reflect on whether or not the war itself was justified. That is a whole different subject. Rather, the real issue is the use and misuse of intelligence to support a policy, especially where it appears that the policy was decided on and the intelligence twisted to support it.

It should be pointed out that such abuses of intelligence are hardly unique to the United States: they are endemic to the business of policymaking and use of intelligence assessments. Any student of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan will soon find how corrupted that intelligence assessment was because key people in Moscow wanted the answers to their questions to look a certain way, and their subordinates obligingly complied with the pressure from above.

Israeli intelligence failed grievously in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, not least because it bought the government's strategic assessment of Arab intentions and capabilities and failed in its responsibility to question that assessment and analyze evidence impartially without reference to it. Because intelligence agencies have an inherently political responsibility and are invariably large bureaucratic agencies with exquisite antennae concerning the requests of their masters, such manifestations or corruptions of the process are a constant risk and occupational hazard.

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[seventhson]

1. Bush Lied. Thousands have died. Thousands more are dying.

Teneat lied today when he testifed that he did not read the SOTU address.

THAT was his excuse: I did not even read the fucking thing.

BUSH KNEW it was a lie.

BUSH LIED to the country.

And NOW Americans and Iraqis and others are dying in droves.

It is a guerrilla war.

Like Vietnam but only worse.

At least in Vietnam there was a NORTH and SOUTH.

Now we have occupied a whole country that is FULL of people who will kill our young men and women.

There is no part of the country that is even in theory supportive wholley of our "mission" there.

Has anyone read Hemingway's war dispatches?

You cannot win in such a situation.

We need to bring the US troops home.

The UN let this shit happen. They let Bush the asshole do this and they need to send in peacekeepers until Iraqis can elect or choose a leader or leaders and a government.

SUPPORT US TROOPS: THEY WANT TO COME HOME NOW! BRING THEM HOME!

[jarab]

2. Excellent short article

Who'da ever thunk we'd have to go to Asia Times to get a good perspective on intel as used for political expediency.
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