Spy Agencies Warned of Iraq Resistance (washingtonpost.com, Tuesday, September 9, 2003; Page A01): U.S. intelligence agencies warned Bush administration policymakers before the war in Iraq that there would be significant armed opposition to a U.S.-led occupation, according to administration and congressional sources familiar with the reports. [...] As U.S. military casualties mount and resistance forces wage a campaign of targeted bombings in Iraq, some administration officials have begun to fault the CIA and other intelligence agencies for being overly optimistic and failing to anticipate such widespread and sustained opposition to a U.S. occupation. But several administration and congressional sources interviewed for this article said the opposite occurred. They said senior policymakers at the White House, Pentagon and elsewhere received classified analyses before the war warning about the dangers of the postwar period. "Intelligence reports told them at some length about possibilities for unpleasantness," said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity. "The reports were written, but we don't know if they were read."
One wonders if it has occured to the administration that it is unseemly, at the least, and massively counterproductive, at its worst, that the country's intelligence agencies feel the need to defend themselves publicly from the administration itself.
This administration's proclivity for demanding intelligence that matches what it wants to do, and ignoring information to the contrary, would mean that they probably very frequently make ill-informed and ill-advised decisions, both because some analysts are shading their data to match demands, and because they're not reading the data that doesn't. On the other hand, the increasing defensiveness of the intelligence agencies in response to the public pillorying they're getting from the administration means that, to the best of their abilities, they may well be supplying unfiltered intelligence to the administration. That is, at this point, it's probably safest to give raw data -- This is what's happening, these are the logistic implications -- with as little interpretation as possible; no analysis of what it all means in the big and small pictures. It is, after all, safest. You can't be yanked around by the administration for supplying information they don't want if you give them everything.
This is just desperately sad, really.
A White House official said the administration is not surprised by the level of resistance U.S. forces are encountering. "It does not come as a surprise that some of the bitter fanatics continue to fight against a foregone conclusion and that foreign terrorists would seek to hold back progress made in Iraq over the last five months," the official said.Ah. "Progress". Basic services still nonfunctional. Crime -- apart from the various attacks on US and UN personnel -- at obnoxiously high levels. A governing council without the authority to actually govern. An administrator who essentially doesn't administer. Heaven save anyone from such "progress".
On Feb. 26, the day Bush said in a speech that bringing democracy to Iraq would help democratize other Arab countries, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research completed a classified analysis that dismissed the idea. The State Department analysis reportedly stated that "liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve" in Iraq and that "electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements."
Well, there's a big DUH. You've got an Islamist movement that's been restrained with malice aforethought for many years. You've got an absolute majority that resents what the Americans have done to their country, however much they may or may not appreciate the fact that Saddam is no longer in power. It would be a wonder if free elections didn't produce a government strikingly hostile to the US and its interests.
Posted by iain at September 09, 2003 01:17 PMComments
