This just in: Bush's Prewar Intelligence Completely Sucked

Post by **Relbeek Einre** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 9:26 am

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/03/31/ ... index.html

This should surprise nobody.

Post by **Ddrak** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 9:49 am

/faint

Rsak · Post by **Rsak** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:11 am

To be accurate the problem extended beyond the United States.

Embar Angylwrath · Post by **Embar Angylwrath** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:50 am

Its a misleading article. In bold letters, CNN claims the US was wrong (implying that the US was the only country that had intelligence operations in Iraq). If you read further down, it say the "intelligence community", which is more descriptive of what was really the case. Great Britain, the US, and other countries had intelligence operations in Iraq, all of them saying the same thing.

The position that Iraq had WMDs wasn't soley a US position, as CNN is spinning it.

Aabe · Post by **Aabe** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:59 am

Speaking of spinning, if the world stopped spinning, the cetrifical force would cease, would we be noticably heavier?

rodric · Post by **rodric** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 11:47 am

The question I don't hear anyone asking is this:

Is it reasonable to expect our intelligence agencies to be able to know this sort of information?

Rhodric

Shallon · Post by **Shallon** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 12:07 pm

Reasonable? Maybe, but if they don't know then do not make it up.

Aabe · Post by **Aabe** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 12:27 pm

A question I like: Is our intelligence any better than what we had when Bush first took office? Or have we been just moving things around and claiming it is better.

Embar Angylwrath · Post by **Embar Angylwrath** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 1:30 pm

Aabe wrote:A question I like: Is our intelligence any better than what we had when Bush first took office? Or have we been just moving things around and claiming it is better.

Good question. Remember though that the intelligence the President receives is from an "organization", not a some spy invited over for coffee. The intelligence "organization" that gave the intel to Bush was essentially the same organization that provided intel to Clinton. The organization is unique in that it's a specialized field, and you can't go out and recruit, train and replace a large number of spies like you could air traffic controllers.

I want to differentiate between human intel (from an agency like the CIA for example) and technology based intel (NSA for example).

Klast Brell · Post by **Klast Brell** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 1:35 pm

To be accurate you should ask why curveball was trusted over all the contradictory evidence. But the congressional investigations and the presidential one have explicitly avoided examining how data was chosen; only looking at the quality of the data that was used.

Post by **Ddrak** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 1:57 pm

As far as I understand it, unbiased humint was non-existant. The only assets the CIA had in the area were the exiles (Chalabi etc.), who had a vested interest in getting the US involved in a shooting war.

Dd

Embar Angylwrath · Post by **Embar Angylwrath** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 2:22 pm

They had some humint, but honestly, it was very limited after the first Gulf War. And because of budget constraints, US humint towards WMDs wasn't aggresively pursued.