Intelligence

From page 208 of America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 911 the Misunderstood Years Between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Start of the War on Terror by Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier:

Some officials recall having reasons to second-guess what they were reading and hearing. "Up until Desert Fox, I believed that [Saddam] had WMD," says Anthony Zinni, the Marine general who commanded the air assault and who emerged as a leading skeptic of calls to overthrow the Iraqi government. "Then Clinton said we would bomb the WMD sides. I asked the intelligence community for the targets, but they couldn't give me any. Nothing they gave me was definitively a WMD target. They were all dual-use. That's when my doubts began."

One reason the Bush administration was able to get away with massively over-interpreting the Iraq/WMD intelligence is that they weren't exactly the first administration to do so, they built upon earlier trends in questionable analysis. Of course things got even worse later. Inspectors from UNMOVIC and the IAEA were back on the ground in Iraq, saying their findings didn't confirm American suspicions. The administration pushed back. So UNMOVIC and the IAEA sensibly asked the Americans to share intel with them and they'd check out whatever leads Bush wanted them to check out. But there were no leads to check out! The press not only managed to completely ignore this, but to continues ignoring the fact that this ever happened up until this very day.

Comments

and yet, the DFH's were screaming it at the top of their fucking lungs for months and months before the war officially started.

Posted by cleek | June 10, 2008 1:17 PM

And Mathew Yglesias ignored all of it too!

Posted by blah | June 10, 2008 1:19 PM

Hans Blix couldn't find anything... but because this admin had (has) an irrational distrust of the UN, they bugged his office, spread rumors about him and ignored his findings.

Bravo!

Posted by TDE | June 10, 2008 1:26 PM

There were inspectors in Iraq? Who knew? Oh, right, everyone who could read.

Posted by Trevor J | June 10, 2008 1:33 PM

No, there were plenty of leads to check out. They were just "garbage". It was reported at the time, but was buried under the Bush administration's push for war.

Posted by Adam Steinbaugh | June 10, 2008 1:35 PM

One reason the Bush administration was able to get away with massively over-interpreting the Iraq/WMD intelligence is that they weren't exactly the first administration to do so, they built upon earlier trends in questionable analysis.

See! Bill Clinton also believed Iraq had WMDs. Even Demo-satanic "President" Bill Clinton believed this. So you have to be one dirty hippy to have not wanted to go to war with Iraq.

Anyway, since Bill Clinton, to whom the Democrats probably offer daily sacrifices the way we offer sacrifices to St. Ronnie, supported the war, all true opponants of the war should eschew the party of Bill Clinton and vote for McCain, who is all mavericky and such like.

[ / GOP talking points ]

BTW ... the Dems. better be ready for that ... they used it in 2004 against Kerry and it pretty much worked. Of course, Obama was against the war, IIRC, which'll make the "there's not a dime's worth of difference between the parties on Iraq" argument a little less cogent, but watch out for it to be used and to work on some people anyway.

Posted by DAS | June 10, 2008 1:39 PM

I think when the facts are sorted out future historians are going to judge Bill Clinton very harshly, a lot more harshly than most present day liberals realize. Clinton's Iraq policy was horribly misguided and really did lay the groundwork for the fiasco Dubya has caused.

Posted by vanya6724 | June 10, 2008 2:11 PM

No, there were plenty of leads to check out. They were just "garbage". It was reported at the time, but was buried under the Bush administration's push for war.

Posted by Adam Steinbaugh | June 10, 2008 2:14 PM

I remember this vividly, listening to NPR while driving my dog to the park in the months leading up to the invasion. It seemed crystal clear to me then (and I would have thought to the rest of the semi-informed world as well) that there was no real evidence of WMD, because if there were, the inspectors could easily have found it, or else the movement/removal easily detected. It was clear from day -500 that this war was cooked, a sham, a fraud, just like the administration that begot it.

(I suppose this violates the Atlantic's policy against "defamatory" postings, but it is the truth.)

Posted by Michael Wasserman | June 10, 2008 2:18 PM

If you knew anything about the military-technical issues involved, the whole official story was crap from the beginning.

Of course, as far as I can tell, essentially no one in public life - in the Administration, in the press, in Congress _did_ know anything about those issues. They don't know any more today. Nor do they bother to talk to anyone who does. If the country ever gets into an existential crisis that requires a technically competent ruling class - shoot, if it even requires a ruling class that bothers to pay attention to experts - we're all gonna die.

Posted by gcochran | June 10, 2008 2:34 PM

I presume that McClatchy and Knight Ridder aren't classified as press, since I read many stories by both detailing these and other "discrepencies" well before the invasion.

Posted by Roger Tompkins | June 10, 2008 2:43 PM

What has stood out to me for five years is how the press has studiously avoided mentioning that Bush repeatedly used the testimony of Hussein Kamal in his speeches as evidence that Saddam had weapons, but never pointed out that Kamal also said Iraq had destroyed the weapons it had.

And it's not like that wasn't available through "a Google."

Posted by nitpicker | June 10, 2008 2:44 PM

i'm not quite sure what the clinton reference here is supposed to mean: saddam did, in fact, have a WMD program at one time. clinton did, in fact, destroy a component of it through targeted aerial bombing.

are people disputing this?

none of this justifies the bush administration and everyone else who supported the idea of "the wmds are coming," but that saddam didn't have a wmd program in 2002 doesn't mean he never had one....

Posted by howard | June 10, 2008 2:49 PM

Of course, as far as I can tell, essentially no one in public life - in the Administration, in the press, in Congress _did_ know anything about those issues. - gcochran

One of my HS math teachers (geometry then elementary functions) was wont to point out that, excepting Carter, none of the Presidents of the nuclear era likely had any idea how exactly nukes work. She thought this was (is) incredibly frightening.

Posted by DAS | June 10, 2008 2:57 PM

think when the facts are sorted out future historians are going to judge Bill Clinton very harshly, a lot more harshly than most present day liberals realize.

Clinton will avoid a harsher judgment from history because his Administration was sandwiched between the disastrous bookends that are the Bush I and Bush II Administrations.

Posted by "Fair and Balanced" Dave | June 10, 2008 2:59 PM

Not only isn't this Bush, or the Bush family, it's not even "modern" (i.e., post-WW II). It's as old as the Republic, running back to the late 18th century, with such well-known "ginned up" wars as the Mexican-American and the Spanish-Cuban-Filipino-American in the 19th century. It's the way the country has always operated, and anyone who was paying any attention at all knew it was the same old thing in 2002-03 (even those of us who supported the war!).

Posted by Mr. X | June 10, 2008 3:00 PM

howard, you are under the mistaken impression that the Dem line has to be internally consistent. It doesn't, so there's nothing wrong with saying, as Matt apparently now does, that Clinton's ordered operation destroyed Iraq's WMD program, and that, according to Zinni, who led those operations, there were no WMD sites to destroy. I don't recommend using both in the same argument, but using one or the other as circumstances permit it entirely permissible. This isn't about the facts, it's about the arguments.

Posted by Thomas | June 10, 2008 3:01 PM

The evidence for the existence of the WMD was epistemically on a par with the evidence for the existence of the Michelle Obama "Whitey" video.

Posted by live | June 10, 2008 3:06 PM

Matt is incorrect when he says the CIA did not provide Blix with any Iraqi sites to inspect. Tenet confirmed to Sen. Levin's committee that he'd provided to Blix the best U.S. intelligence on more than 100 suspected sites.

This, of course, paints a far more sinister picture than Matt suggests. The fact is that Blix checked out the CIA's intelligence, conducted no-notice inspections of these sites in Iraq, and found nothing. Bush, rather than concluding that our intelligence was suspect, accelerated the rush to war.

The following is from a Salon article entitled "What George Tenet Really Knew About Iraq":

Between late November and mid-March 2003, Blix reports, the U.N. inspectors made 700 separate visits to 500 sites. About three dozen of those sites had been suggested by intelligence services, many by Tenet's CIA, which insisted that these were "the best" in the agency's database. Blix was shocked. "If this was the best, what was the rest?" he asked himself. "Could there be 100 percent certainty about the existence of weapons of mass destruction but zero-percent knowledge about their location?"

Here's the link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/07/02/tenet_iraq/index3.html

Posted by thomas c | June 10, 2008 3:12 PM

the other unremembered event is the delivery to the u.n. by the iraqi government in 12/02 of over 10,000 pages of documentation of their destruction of wmd material and facilities, roundly dismissed as a ploy at the time, demonstrated to be the emmes after the invasion.

Posted by dbreger | June 10, 2008 3:16 PM

History will record that this country went bat-shit crazy in the several years after 9/11 and succumbed to bald-faced hype, paranoia, and Sgt. Rockism. Shock and awe, people, shock and awe! Mission Accomplished! Suck. On. This!

We weren't equal to this test of our national character. We committed mayhem, lashing out in fear and panic, utterly razing a nation of some 25 million Iraqis that shows no sign of being capable or reconstitution in any recognizable form.

We lost our shit--everybody, that is, except for the DFHs.

How dare they rub it in the nation's face? We meant well! Many people were deluded! Misled! Startled by their own nightmares! Oh, the humanity!

Posted by elle loco | June 10, 2008 3:28 PM

howard:

saddam did, in fact, have a WMD program at one time. clinton did, in fact, destroy a component of it through targeted aerial bombing.

No. Iraq did not have any WMD programs after 1991, hence Clinton did not destroy a component of them during Desert Fox in 1998. I assume your misunderstanding originates one way or another from George Packer's book, which got this wrong for some reason.

Thomas:

howard, you are under the mistaken impression that the Dem line has to be internally consistent. It doesn't, so there's nothing wrong with saying, as Matt apparently now does, that Clinton's ordered operation destroyed Iraq's WMD program, and that, according to Zinni, who led those operations, there were no WMD sites to destroy. I don't recommend using both in the same argument, but using one or the other as circumstances permit it entirely permissible. This isn't about the facts, it's about the arguments.

Thomas, please try not to be any stupider than absolutely necessary.

Posted by 23456 | June 10, 2008 3:34 PM

I remember listening to the UN guys on NPR saying they got nothing. That they checked everything in Powell's speech and they got nothing. That they have very sophisticated ways of tracking radioisotopes and they got nothing.

So I went around the office and my neighborhood saying something is very wrong here. Why are we rushing into war when the UN has nothing? And nearly everyone tried to explain to me that I was nuts, that the UN was useless, that a negative does not rule out a positive or mostly that Saddam had kicked the UN inspectors out.

Posted by Mart | June 10, 2008 3:38 PM

People who say, "Well Clinton got the WMD wrong, too" always frustrate and enrage me. Clinton didn't treat the intelligence as sufficient to justify an invasion. He didn't start a f___ing war over them. Therefore, Clinton's errors in this respect don't justify or excuse those of George W. Bush.

Posted by rea | June 10, 2008 4:06 PM

rea, well, he did bomb Iraq over them, which would in ordinary parlance be thought of a starting a fucking war over them. Obviously there's a practical difference between an invasion and a bombing campaign, but there's no high principle between the two.

Posted by Thomas | June 10, 2008 4:27 PM

People who say, "Well Clinton got the WMD wrong, too" always frustrate and enrage me.

Me too. What they should say is "Clinton lied about the WMD, too."

While Clinton lied somewhat less than Bush on the issue, the consequences -- perhaps a million Iraqis killed by sanctions justified by presence of WMD -- were is some ways worse than the current war. Of course, I have confidence Bush will win the "who's killed more Iraqis" contest in the end.

Posted by 23456 | June 10, 2008 4:49 PM

No Clinton didn't start a war, but if he had been President after 9/11 I bet he would have despite his better judgement. I don't think Clinton was a true believer in the Saddaam threat, it's likely he just didn't have the balls, or feel it was politically expedient, to use time and energy fighting a military establishment that had invested a lot of time and energy in portraying Iraq as a mortal energy. This is why Obama is sadly also likely to fail - it's hard for even a determined President to fight the inertia of the military-industrial complex, doubly hard for someone like Clinton who didn't consider it a core issue (and at the time maybe he was right, it's only in hindsight that we can see how much he inadvertently aided and abetted the Bush cause).

Posted by vanya | June 10, 2008 4:50 PM

23456, at risk of digging too deeply into the weeds, my read of the duelfer report is that while wmd programs and capabilities were, in general, shut down in 1991, there were some questionable continued activities in biological weapons until the destruction of al hakam in 1996, and that this provided a legitimate basis (during the back-and-forth with inspectors that was going on at the time) to believe that the 1998 Desert Fox raid was degrading capabilities. duelfer seems to suggest that regardless of whether it authentically degraded capabilities or not (and i'm relying on memory here), certainly 1998 was the nail in the coffin of wmd activities of any kind.

but you're right, i probably state that a little strongly.

of course, it's all trivia in that wmds should be reserved for nuclear weapons and we shouldn't be spending our time on parsing biological weapons programs....

Posted by howard | June 10, 2008 4:55 PM

my read of the duelfer report is that while wmd programs and capabilities were, in general, shut down in 1991, there were some questionable continued activities in biological weapons until the destruction of al hakam in 1996, and that this provided a legitimate basis (during the back-and-forth with inspectors that was going on at the time) to believe that the 1998 Desert Fox raid was degrading capabilities. duelfer seems to suggest that regardless of whether it authentically degraded capabilities or not (and i'm relying on memory here), certainly 1998 was the nail in the coffin of wmd activities of any kind.

There's a lot of handwaving in the Duelfer report meant to suggest that there was some kind of BW program after 1991, but when you look closely there's nothing there. Iraq did lie about the original purpose of Al Hakam, but there's no sign they used it for prohibited programs.

Re Desert Fox, see this article:

Indeed, from the large list of WMD-related targets, US and British aircraft would eventually strike only eleven during DESERT FOX and these were nearly all missile-related.

And in fact the missile-related strikes were all against places carrying out permitted activities under the UNSC resolutions. We really weren't trying to degrade Iraq's WMD capability, because -- as Zinni says -- they didn't have anything good to target.

Posted by 23456 | June 10, 2008 5:52 PM

Bush's shock -n- awe invasion on the cheap caused such widespread chaos and looting that it's impossible to know what was really going on before the invasion.

The country is still too unsafe for reporters to work freely, and Bush has a long record of lying. This makes it impossible to know what's really going on, even today.

Posted by Aatos | June 10, 2008 6:09 PM

Tom Ricks profiled Zinni in December '03

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22922-2003Dec22?language=printer

Posted by rickhavoc | June 10, 2008 6:54 PM

Does Matt want to talk now about how the same crap is being done TODAY over the phony Iranian "laptop"?

Thought not.

The November NIE which declared Iran HAD a nuclear weapons program up until 2003 relied almost entirely on that laptop and some "interpreted" intercepted phone conversations that never once mentioned an actual nuclear weapons program.

Today, the IAEA is still pressuring Iran about that laptop, while admitting that they have NO "credible evidence" about "the allegations" of weaponization.

And Matt can't discuss that.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 10, 2008 7:38 PM

Not just the press. The Senate Intelligence committee did not note that UNMOVIC and the IAEA generated any intelligence with which administration claims should have been consistent. They are foreigners and don't count. It is well known that only the USA has intelligence.

Posted by Robert Waldmann | June 10, 2008 7:47 PM

everyone who willfully or negligently ignored the obvious bullshit in the run up to the war should serve in penal battalions for varying periods of time

sadly this would include matt yglesias

but there must be consequences for stupidity, no?

Posted by Syd B | June 10, 2008 8:41 PM

The gap between September, 2002 and May 2003 is the crucial time period for what the administration knew and when it knew it. The weapons inspectors re-entered Iraq in January 2003 and found nothing. No US information was confirmed.
There was an active effort among insiders to avoid war--again not much discussed. But no public figure stepped up to slow the process or ask for reconsideration.
President Bush moved the troops into position, and simply never intended to back down.
The false understanding about WMD may have been plausible in September 02; by May 03 it wasn't.
But the war came.

Posted by Thomas Barrett | June 10, 2008 11:45 PM

Tom Ricks also interviewed the US Officer in charge of finding Saddam's weapons in his book Fiasco. Before the war, the officer had to prepare his team so he went to the DIA and the CIA and got the list of suspected WMD sites. It was something like 928 sites. He realized there was no way to get to them all quickly and he didn't want loose WMD floating around, so he asked the intelligence guys to prioritize the list. There wasn't a single site on the list that they gave more than 50% chance of there being WMD. The officer decided to look at the actual intelligence that got a site put on the list and it was all weak. He described his heart as sinking at that moment, realizing that the reason for going to war was a mirage.

Posted by KevinNYC | June 11, 2008 12:43 AM

This is a follow-up to thomas c's post above.

Here's what Blix said on PBS, March 17, 2004:

HANS BLIX: Well, they certainly advanced weapons of mass destruction as the decisive reason for going to war, and I think the evidence was rather weak at the time. We had heard in the autumn of 2002 that the alleged aluminum tubes, for instance, which were thought, alleged to be for making the centrifuges, were probably more likely to be for making a rocket. And in January 2003, we had performed quite a lot of inspections to sites which were given by intelligence and they had not shown any weapons of mass destruction, so we began to be doubtful.

And among the 700 inspections that we performed, none brought us any evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

Posted by Steve J. | June 11, 2008 1:04 AM

ANOTHER FOLLOW-UP TO thomas c's post:

The New York Times

March 28, 2004 Sunday
Late Edition - Final

What Weapons?

BYLINE: By Deborah Solomon

SECTION: Section 6; Column 1; Magazine Desk; Pg. 15; THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 3-28-04: QUESTIONS FOR HANS BLIX

LENGTH: 608 words

Q: Your new book, ''Disarming Iraq,'' recounts your futile search for weapons as the former chief United Nations weapons inspector.

Yes, President Bush
and Tony Blair were convinced there was something there. They were convinced there were witches.

You yourself initially believed there were weapons! Only later did you change your mind.

Yes, I, too, believed there were weapons. I began to be skeptical when we went to sites that were given to us by U.S. intelligence and we found nothing. They said this is the best intelligence we have, and I said, if this is the best, what is the rest?

Posted by Steve J. | June 11, 2008 1:14 AM

ANOTHER FOLLOW-UP TO thomas c's post:

The New York Times

March 28, 2004 Sunday
Late Edition - Final

What Weapons?

BYLINE: By Deborah Solomon

SECTION: Section 6; Column 1; Magazine Desk; Pg. 15; THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 3-28-04: QUESTIONS FOR HANS BLIX

LENGTH: 608 words

Q: Your new book, ''Disarming Iraq,'' recounts your futile search for weapons as the former chief United Nations weapons inspector.

Yes, President Bush
and Tony Blair were convinced there was something there. They were convinced there were witches.

You yourself initially believed there were weapons! Only later did you change your mind.

Yes, I, too, believed there were weapons. I began to be skeptical when we went to sites that were given to us by U.S. intelligence and we found nothing. They said this is the best intelligence we have, and I said, if this is the best, what is the rest?

Posted by Steve J. | June 11, 2008 1:19 AM

Thanks, Steve J, for the additional references to Blix's acknowledgment that he'd received U.S. intelligence characterized by our CIA Director as our "best" intelligence on alleged Iraqi WMD.

Here's another confirmation, from the Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessemnts on Iraq (dated July 7, 2004):

"The Intelligence Community had been sharing intelligence with the United Nations inspectors since late 2002 on what it considered the top 148 suspect sites, including the 105 Iraqi sites it considered "high" and "medium" priority sites where the Intelligence Community believed the likelihood of finding proscribed weapons activity was the greatest.

"Director Tenet testified in mid-February 2003 that the Intelligence Community had shared with the United Nations inspectors all information it had on these high and medium priority sites, even though data provided by the CIA to the Committee indicated otherwise. In fact, at the time of the Director's testimony, the CIA's own classified information showed that no information had been shared on 29 of the Intelligence Community's 105 high and medium priority sites. Repeated attempts by a Committee member over the next few weeks to have the Director correct his public assurances failed.

"Three weeks later, on March 6, 2003, both Director Tenet and National Security Advisor Rice wrote unclassified letters to Senators on the Committee repeating the same false claim. The war was two weeks away and the message was obvious: the Administration had decided the time for international inspections was over.

Over a year later, after much prodding, the CIA declassified the fact that by the time inspections were halted in early March it still had not shared information with United Nations inspectors on 21 of the Intelligence Community's 105 high and medium priority suspect sites."

As confirmed by the Committee’s report, the CIA provided Blix and his inspectors with intelligence on over 80 suspected WMD sites. Blix has confirmed that he conducted no-notice inspections of dozens of these sites and found nothing. Blix notified the administration of this shortly before his report to the U.N. on March 7, 2003.

I e-mailed Matt with this excerpt from the Select Committee's report yesterday. Obviously, this information strengthens Matt's argument that bush was incredibly irresponsible in proceeding to war. I wish Matt would acknowledge this, rather than behave like some MSM prima donna who can't acknowledge error. Hey Matt, you're one of our best bloggers, and I wouldn't be here if I didn't love your work. Don't act like a John King or David Gregory.

Posted by thomas c | June 11, 2008 10:37 AM

@Thomas: you opine: "Obviously there's a practical difference between an invasion and a bombing campaign, but there's no high principle between the two."

Let me give you over 4,000 "high principles" between the two. Problem with armchair patriots is they disregard the very real loss of American lives (if no one else's) and the horrendous injuries brought about by this action you characterize as having no "high principle" differentiating it from a bombing.

As with this mis-administration, you are egregiously, woefully and most probably willfully out of touch.

Posted by crescentdave | June 11, 2008 3:14 PM