It's Official

Not that it's a genuine surprise to anyone at this point, but it seems the official National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq has concluded that "the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks." Naturally, it also turns out that "the classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document."

Consequently, for months and months the administration has reacted to the report not by trying to improve its policies, but rather by covering up the NIE. Same sorry old story, but it's an absolute disaster for the country. Meanwhile, much of our press continues to identify national security "toughness" with stubborn refusal to see what's lying right before everyone's eyes: The invasion of Iraq has been a gigantic, years-long rolling catastrophe for American security.

Comments

Curious minds want to know what these analysts are advising is the likely consequence of US or Israeli airstrikes on Iran...

Posted by otto | September 24, 2006 10:05 AM

so matthew, as this disaster unfolds, perhaps you will one day wake up and realize that those who got carried away with the anti-vietnam-war movement came to be radicalized, since, with the exception of the specific reference to the NIE, your second paragraph could have been written in 1967.

or 1969.

or 1971.

PS. note that i say this as both a proud opponent of the war in vietnam and a despiser in general of the baby boom generation to which i belong.

Posted by howard | September 24, 2006 11:51 AM

What about his second paragraph was actually wrong? Unlike the Viet Cong, an Iranian-backed Iraq can be an actual security threat for us while inspiring more people worldwide to join al-Qaeda. The Viet Cong were not an international group people could really join that threatened US soil.

Posted by Reality Man | September 24, 2006 12:24 PM

In his column today, David Brooks says maybe it would have been a better idea to try economic reform before political reform. Oh, and that the blame lies with the Iraqi people for not being psychologically ready for freedom and being too religious. Thanks Bobo.

Posted by clb72 | September 24, 2006 12:47 PM

reality man, perhaps i wasn't clear: i'm not saying anything is wrong about matthew's second paragraph. all i'm saying is that matthew's frequently (and often accurately) expressed disdain about baby boomers might be tempered a touch by realizing that for the baby boom genration, vietnam was indeed as much of a national security disaster as iraq is today. lacking blogging, they took to the streets, something matthew has often critiqued.

Posted by howard | September 24, 2006 1:09 PM

for the baby boom genration, vietnam was indeed as much of a national security disaster as iraq is today. lacking blogging, they took to the streets

I'm a little young to remember, but I thought they took to the streets because they objected to massive, pointless destruction and death, not because they thought the Vietnam war was making us less safe from the Communists.

Posted by live | September 24, 2006 1:16 PM

has concluded that "the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks

Really! It's a slam dunk!

according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document

And the CIA's war on the White House continues. Zzzzzz...

Posted by Al | September 24, 2006 1:16 PM

live wrote: "...I thought they took to the streets because they objected to massive, pointless destruction and death, not because they thought the Vietnam war was making us less safe from the Communists."

That may have been part of it, but I think another important factor was the conscription: the draft. If you or your friends were at risk of being involuntarily sent to a jungle to die, I guess you feel the stakes are higher.

That's one reason the politicians want to avoid a draft, even if many were to perceive it as necessary for the military.

That's my bet anyway.

Posted by blatherskite | September 24, 2006 2:05 PM

well, to try and clarify one more time: vietnam was a national security disaster on its own terms. the ostensible purpose of the war - to prevent the domino theory from turning into a reality - was ridiculous, and in the end, the purpose of the war became to achieve "peace with honor," which had no meaning. It cost tens of thousands of american lives, tens of thousands of vietnamese lives, and in today's dollars, hundreds of billions.

this was all clear as early as 1965, when the teach-in movement began and SDS and various old lefties began to criticize the war for its pointlessness.

today, in the face of a national security disaster, there is no purpose to take to the streets: the internet is a much more effective way to mobilize and reach out and communicate.

saying that the war was a pointless cause of death and destruction is no different than saying that the war was not a benefit to US national security. (as for the draft, yes, undoubtedly the draft played a real role in why so many draft-age males were opposed to the war, but that's besides my point.)

Al, this is a consensus of multiple intel agencies, so i assume you really mean that negroponte has turned on the bush administration. and who knows, maybe he has! even negroponte can probably only take so much flat-out denial and derangement. Bush, for instance, has now told wolf blitzer that this fiasco is just a "comma" in the face of history: what a frickin' asswipe the little man in the oval office is. in the face of abject failure, he looks to history to bail him out.

instead, history will wonder why he was allowed to continue to harm america and serve the objective interests of those who hate us.

Posted by howard | September 24, 2006 3:24 PM

tens of thousands of vietnamese lives

More like millions.

Posted by jimBOB | September 24, 2006 3:38 PM

The only people who can disagree with the President are the people who would never disagree with the President.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 24, 2006 3:51 PM

Matt

Note that the April NIE is not on Iraq. It's on "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States." The Iraq NIE is currently being prepared.

Al

That's an unusually lame response, even by your standards. Note that the NIEs are authoritative judgments of the intelligence community as a whole, which extends well beyond the CIA. Note too that they're prepared by the National Intelligence Council, which is under the control of the DNI, no longer the head of CIA, as was the case with the October 2002 NIE that biffed the Iraq stuff so badly and that was misused nevertheless by the Bush administration. Note that the DNI is John Negroponte.

Or are you simply doing to extend your remarks and say the intel community as a whole is at war with the Bush administration?

Posted by Jeff | September 24, 2006 3:52 PM

saying that the war was a pointless cause of death and destruction is no different than saying that the war was not a benefit to US national security.

I find that puzzling. Those statements simply don't mean the same thing. I think that a lot of people protested the death and destruction, and simultaneously did not believe that the fiasco in Vietnam made the US any less secure -- or simply weren't motivated by any consideration of national security.

If your point is that all the damage caused by the war necessarily entailed damage in some sense to our security interests, then I take your point. But I don't think that is what was motivating the radicalized protesters. Indeed, I suspect many of them were quite happy to see the US humiliated as a "paper tiger" on the world stage.

today, in the face of a national security disaster, there is no purpose to take to the streets: the internet is a much more effective way to mobilize and reach out and communicate.

I don't disagree about the importance of the Internet, but I do disagree that that means that taking to the streets is now obsolete. It has a visceral impact that can't be achieved by a bunch of solitary individuals typing at their computers. Spectacle and the public demonstration of solidarity are important.

Posted by live | September 24, 2006 3:52 PM

I like the idea that the Vietnam War was pointless, but that the Iraq war, in which we toppled the region's buttress against Iran and subsequently have been fighting the very gov't we ourselves installed in Iraq and which has no possible outcome except an Iraqi gov't which will support Iran, but which we can't quit because quitting would strengthen Iran ISN'T pointless.

This generation's pointlessness can see my generation's pointlessness and raise them 5 brazillian nihilistic paradoxes.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 24, 2006 3:57 PM

Ah, yes, Al is still trying the "it's the CIA's fault Bush said there were WMD's" routine, despite the fact that Bush's objection to the CIA was that their estimates weren't nearly aggressive enough. Kind of sad to see a hack phone it in like this.

Posted by Scott Lemieux | September 24, 2006 4:05 PM

It's so ironic to see y'all proclaiming the authority of an NIE. But, heck, I'm a reasonable guy: if you agree that it was perfectly reasonable for Bush to rely on the October 2002 NIE that said that Saddam had WMD (not only that he had chemical and biological weapons, but that he was reconstituting his nuclear program - and that if Saddam acquired sufficient uranium, he could make a nuclear weapon within a year), then I'll accept that it's reasonable to rely on this one.

The statement that other agencies and people are involved in preparing an NIE is misleading. That is, of course, true, as far as it goes. But that avoids the obvious point that CIA is the most important agency involved.

Posted by Al | September 24, 2006 4:16 PM

You're entirely too kind, laying the blame on the press.
What if the leader of the Democratic party and its campaign for the House were on speaking terms, and had sat down and devised six ways to increase our security--swis--starting with say, finally getting round to checking cargo on ships and airlines, going onto securing chemical plants and nuclear generators, and throwing in sending hunter-killer teams to ferret out bin Laden. It could be mostly blarney. But then when mediocre senatorial candidates like Bob Menendez are thrown a terrorism question, they wouldn't have to mumble and then change the subject.

What if, that is to say, the Democratic party didn't so enjoy the wilderness forever and work so hard to stay there forever?

Posted by Rainsborough | September 24, 2006 5:15 PM

Kind of sad to see a hack phone it in like this.

Yes, Al's shameless hackery is at a low ebb today. But I have faith he will perk up and soon return to his normal hacktacular form.

Posted by grh | September 24, 2006 5:34 PM

"And the CIA's war on the White House continues."

Quite true.

But I'm curious what motivation you attribute to the CIA to account for this.

Has the CIA been infiltrated by appeasers and peaceniks, do you think? Or are they all just careerists who somehow see attacking their bosses as beneficial to their careers through some mysterious alchemy? Perhaps you think the CIA is lying about a whole range of policy matters to revenge itself on Negroponte?

Posted by Petey | September 24, 2006 6:17 PM

I'm a reasonable guy

Uh huh. And I'm the King of Romania.

if you agree that it was perfectly reasonable for Bush to rely on the October 2002 NIE that said that Saddam had WMD

Time passes for most people. Not for you or your elk apparently. Every single investigation from that point on turned up no WMDs. After a series of failures to verify, what might have been a reasonable stretch became much less so. Also, you act as if Bush were hanging upon the CIA's word for reason to act rather than squeezing its little larynx like a desperate ventriloquist trying to hear words of love from its dummy.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 24, 2006 9:27 PM

What's the big deal here? Tony and Rummy will shortly assure us the report ACTUALLY states everything is going exactly as planned and the great democratic volcano will commence spewing rose petals and chocolates any day now.

Posted by steve duncan | September 24, 2006 11:01 PM

Petey, I think the answer is (a) CIA is a Democrat-laden agency (as, of course, are most government agencies; it's only natural, given that one party is generally pro-government and the other is anti-), (2) CIA is anti-war generally, (C) CIA is still pissed that Bush actually acted on CIA's faulty Iraq intelligence, which obviously greatly embarrased them, and (iv) CIA is still pissed at the Porter Goss selection.

Posted by Al | September 25, 2006 12:09 AM

Time passes for most people. Not for you or your elk [sic!]apparently.

It passes for me too. So what's your point - that events can prove an NIE wrong? You know what, the past 3 years there have been no terrorist attacks in the US. So if you want to talk about events proving the NIE wrong, well, there you go, Your Highness.

Posted by Al | September 25, 2006 12:15 AM

CIA is a Democrat-laden agency (as, of course, are most government agencies; it's only natural, given that one party is generally pro-government and the other is anti-

I think this is wrong. IIRC, I'm getting that from Woodward's book on the CIA (Reagan-era), as well as some of the reporting at the time of the pre-election leaks from the CIA.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | September 25, 2006 12:19 AM

I think the answer is (a) CIA is a Democrat-laden agency (as, of course, are most government agencies; it's only natural, given that one party is generally pro-government and the other is anti-), (2) CIA is anti-war generally,

This explains why they were so hot to go after bin Laden in the 90's. It was all just a ploy to boost Clinton's ratings! And the cruise missiles and hit teams that they used were just standard, Woodstock-generation Flower Power.

Goddam, Al, even by the standards of Republican moronitude, I think you have truly outdone yourself this time. If you don't get your Presidential Medal of Fuckwittery for today's performance, there's really no justice. But I expect you'll still be in the trenches, defending Dear Leader's neglect as proof of his Deeper Loyalty, or something.

Posted by sglover | September 25, 2006 1:35 AM

Goddam, Al, even by the standards of Republican moronitude, I think you have truly outdone yourself this time. If you don't get your Presidential Medal of Fuckwittery for today's performance, there's really no justice.

Hear, hear. Al really does deserve recognition from his superiors.

As I've said many times before, Al is a pure sociopath. People like him are hard for authoritarians to find, and your smarter authoritarian will value someone like him quite highly. As his performance (today and always) shows, there is literally no level of public self-degredation he won't sink to for the good of The Party. If you want to know what personality types ran Stalin's purges, and then in the later stages confessed and were executed after a show trial, just look at Al.

If needed, for instance, Al would eat a sandwhich made from Dick Cheney's shit on national television, and with gusto. Indeed, he'd get some kind of bizarre gratification from the self-abasement involved.

Posted by grh | September 25, 2006 3:32 AM

I am always suprised when Bush gets a pass on this. Even if he had a good reason to believe in 2002 that Iraq had WMDs, he had inspectors on the ground in 2003 that he could have used to verify those beliefs.

I am a little suprised that hacks lile Al still want to defend Bush -- he only has two years left, and when it is done, we are going to hang him on you like an anchor for decades to come, and you are making that a lot easier with the completely mindless support for the dufus.

Posted by theCoach | September 25, 2006 5:32 AM

I am a little surprised that hacks like Al still want to defend Bush

It's not that surprising. You're thinking like a normal person, but again, Al is a sociopath. I guarantee you he gets some freakish form of pleasure from coming here and, as he does above, mounting the most cretinous defense of Bush imaginable. In fact, the more moronic he has to be, the more he probably enjoys it.

Think of high-level Stalinist apparatchiks, or loyal calificadors during the Inquisition. That's who Al is. And, like them, he truly enjoys abasing himself. You wouldn't. I wouldn't. But he does.

Posted by grh | September 25, 2006 7:06 AM

While I disagree with Al on the merits here, as I usually do, I will take a moment to note that grh's rhetoric on this thread marks him as a real scumbag.

Posted by Petey | September 25, 2006 9:18 AM

Petey, how long have you been lucky enough to read Al's verbiage? There is no disagreeing with him "on the merits." He has zero interest in the merits of anything. He has zero interest in any honest dialogue in any circumstances. He lies, he knows he's lying, he knows the people reading what he writes know he's lying. And he keeps on lying.

It's really past time to face up to the fact there are people in American politics who are the equivalent of Soviet apparatchiks. Al is one of the them, and everything I said about him is 100% accurate.

Posted by grh | September 25, 2006 10:11 AM

So what's your point - that events can prove an NIE wrong?

My point is that events had proved it wrong by the time of the invasion, and yet you still actively cling to that disproved-prior-to-the-invasion document. (Don't even think of disowning your ownership. You're the one who brought it up.)

We know that Bush only used the document as PR. It's all PR. Like the inclusion of the "sixteen words" in the State of the Union address. Whoops. The next day it was disavowed and retracted, because who sees retractions? Apparently few. Witness the folk who pilloried Joe Wilson. Those who'd have put him in stocks apparently forgetting that Wikson's position had been tacitly approved by the retraction of those sixteen words. Oh, what a tangled web. And on and on and on.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 25, 2006 10:19 AM

Jeffrey,

It doesn't seem to me that "events had proved [the 2002 NIE] wrong by the time of the invasion". There were additional facts by March 2003, but "proved" is too strong. Likewise, we now have, since the April 2006 NIE, 5-6 more months of no terrorist attacks. That's additional evidence as well.

Nonetheless, you are missing my point. The point is that I have no confidence in any NIE any more, given the massive screw up in October 2002. Whether the post-NIE inspections should have changed Bush's mind regarding the invasion is irrelevant to my point.

(Also, for the record, the "sixteen words" were true, and the Brits stand by their report to this day. Also, Wilson's trip did not undermine those words; indeed, the CIA has said that Wilson's trip supported the claim that Saddam was seeking yellowcake. For the record.)

Posted by Al | September 25, 2006 1:04 PM

"Whether the post-NIE inspections should have changed Bush's mind regarding the invasion is irrelevant to my point."

Nonsense. You're example is an attempt to absolve Bush of being a liar. Language is awful "furry" with meaning and intent.

There's a cornucopia of incidents where CIA was wrong.

Also, for the record, the "sixteen words" were true

You're ignoring the fact that the words were a lie -- a statement intended to deceive -- with that statement. Congratulations.

indeed, the CIA has said that Wilson's trip supported the claim that Saddam was seeking yellowcake. For the record.

For the record, the White House dressed up the statement about Saddam's intent to make the English secret service the witness of fact. The intelligence services that serve the president said that Saddam wasn't. Hence the retraction.

For the record, you weren't privy to the CIA's conversations with the White House that provided the impetus to them retracting the claim. We know that the White House retracted the claim. For the record.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 25, 2006 1:23 PM

Jeffrey,

As noted above, Al is a sociopath. He's well aware that everything he's said here is bullshit in about nine different ways. But -- and I know it's hard for anyone normal to come to terms with this -- he doesn't care. Reality is of no importance whatsoever to him.

Posted by grh | September 25, 2006 4:56 PM