Friday, August 20, 2004
Plan of Attack, Part 3
I've received some complaints from friends and loved ones about the relative lack of content in Part 2, in particular the fact that I haven't done much more, to this point, than summarize Plan of Attack. Guilty as charged -- I've been summarizing, not reviewing or analyzing. Now, as it happens, I think that pulling the particularly interesting pieces out of the book is an important public service, considering we're talking about reporting of facts that went into the decision to go to war in Iraq, but I understand the desire for a genuine review. I intend to provide one once I'm done highlighting the things I learned or found illuminating.
On September 11, 2002, the day before Bush gave a speech at the UN calling for new resolutions to disarm Iraq, Senate Democrats, including Bob Graham of Florida, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent a classified letter to George Tenet, the CIA director. The letter formally requested information on how the CIA's covert plans might pertain to the military and diplomatic plans in Iraq, what the relationship was between Iraq and the global war on terrorism, whether the Iraq threat was immediate, and what the postwar landscape would be like.
The CIA refused this request, on the grounds that the information requested amounted to an assessment of US strategy and policy, which fell well outside the mission of the CIA. Tenet did, however, authorize a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's WMD capability in order to provide senators with at least some of the information they sought. The longer NIEs typically have an executive summary at the front, called "Key Judgments." NIEs had often been criticized in the past by policy-makers for being too filled with hedging, qualifications, and caveats, and so the analysts at the CIA wanted to avoid equivocation; John McLaughlin, who was at that time the deputy CIA director, felt they had to dare to be wrong in order to make judgments that were sufficiently clear. Moreover, this NIE was prepared well after Cheney's August 26 statement, which was unsubstantiated by intelligence, that Saddam definitively had weapons of mass destruction.
The NIE, which was presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee on October 2, stated, "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons." This statement was made as part of the Key Judgments, and it was made without qualification, in accordance with the CIA's thinking that equivocation should be avoided. Deeper within the NIE, a reader could find caveats and uncertainty, including "low confidence" in an assessment of whether Saddam's regime had "directed attacks against US territory" and whether Saddam himself might give al Qaeda assistance in a WMD attack. But none of this lack of confidence was mirrored in the Key Judgments, which is what busy high-level officials actually use to form policy. This, coupled with the Administration's continuing insistence that Iraq had WMD and was on the verge of becoming a nuclear power, ultimately resulted in Administration critics being unable to make an effective argument against a congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq.
While there was talk within the Administration of what grounds to use for a UN resolution authorizing force against Iraq, no issue other than WMD would have given such a resolution a chance of successful passage. Links between Iraq and terrorism were weak or unprovable, and Iraq's dismal human rights record would not constitute sufficient grounds for war in the eyes of the UN and its many member dictatorships.
The resolution, UN resolution 1441, was passed on November 8 after seven weeks of diplomatic negotiation, particularly with France, which had close commercial ties with Iraq. It required Saddam to readmit weapons inspectors and to provide a declaration giving a full accounting of all WMD programs within 30 days. If he failed in both of these tasks, he would be in "material breach" of the resolution, which would result in "serious consequences," i.e. war. Saddam, not being completely stupid, submitted the declaration and readmitted inspectors. This was much to the consternation of the Bush Administration, who had hoped that he would fail to comply so that he could be removed through military action, in accordance with their policy of regime change. In short, they were looking for Saddam to give them an excuse to remove him from power, and were disappointed when it seemed that he would give them no such easy opportunity.
So the Administration began to gather intelligence on Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors, as well as to continue to improve intelligence about Iraq itself. Blix had openly stated that he wanted to be conciliatory, low-key, and non-confrontational. Our spying certainly confirmed that; it revealed that Blix was not, in fact, doing all the things he said he was doing, and that moreover he was not reporting everything that he was doing.
On the Iraq front, George Tenet and John McLaughlin gathered the best of our intelligence and presented it to Bush, Cheney, and Rice on December 21, 2002. The presentation was to be The Case for Iraqi WMD. The presentation mentioned exactly one clear weapons violation -- an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a range of 500 kilometers. The UN had limited Iraqi UAVs to a range of 150 km, and the Iraqi weapons declaration had stated that its UAV had a range of only 80 km. The UAV was the only violation that we were able to confirm by intelligence; the remainder of the presentation was concerned with implications and inferences. After the presentation, Bush turned to Tenet and said, "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?" Tenet threw his arms in the air and said, "It's a slam dunk!" This convinced his skeptical listeners that pressure and ultimately war against Iraq was justified based on the threat.
The saga continues in Part 4.
I've received some complaints from friends and loved ones about the relative lack of content in Part 2, in particular the fact that I haven't done much more, to this point, than summarize Plan of Attack. Guilty as charged -- I've been summarizing, not reviewing or analyzing. Now, as it happens, I think that pulling the particularly interesting pieces out of the book is an important public service, considering we're talking about reporting of facts that went into the decision to go to war in Iraq, but I understand the desire for a genuine review. I intend to provide one once I'm done highlighting the things I learned or found illuminating.
On September 11, 2002, the day before Bush gave a speech at the UN calling for new resolutions to disarm Iraq, Senate Democrats, including Bob Graham of Florida, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent a classified letter to George Tenet, the CIA director. The letter formally requested information on how the CIA's covert plans might pertain to the military and diplomatic plans in Iraq, what the relationship was between Iraq and the global war on terrorism, whether the Iraq threat was immediate, and what the postwar landscape would be like.
The CIA refused this request, on the grounds that the information requested amounted to an assessment of US strategy and policy, which fell well outside the mission of the CIA. Tenet did, however, authorize a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's WMD capability in order to provide senators with at least some of the information they sought. The longer NIEs typically have an executive summary at the front, called "Key Judgments." NIEs had often been criticized in the past by policy-makers for being too filled with hedging, qualifications, and caveats, and so the analysts at the CIA wanted to avoid equivocation; John McLaughlin, who was at that time the deputy CIA director, felt they had to dare to be wrong in order to make judgments that were sufficiently clear. Moreover, this NIE was prepared well after Cheney's August 26 statement, which was unsubstantiated by intelligence, that Saddam definitively had weapons of mass destruction.
The NIE, which was presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee on October 2, stated, "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons." This statement was made as part of the Key Judgments, and it was made without qualification, in accordance with the CIA's thinking that equivocation should be avoided. Deeper within the NIE, a reader could find caveats and uncertainty, including "low confidence" in an assessment of whether Saddam's regime had "directed attacks against US territory" and whether Saddam himself might give al Qaeda assistance in a WMD attack. But none of this lack of confidence was mirrored in the Key Judgments, which is what busy high-level officials actually use to form policy. This, coupled with the Administration's continuing insistence that Iraq had WMD and was on the verge of becoming a nuclear power, ultimately resulted in Administration critics being unable to make an effective argument against a congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq.
While there was talk within the Administration of what grounds to use for a UN resolution authorizing force against Iraq, no issue other than WMD would have given such a resolution a chance of successful passage. Links between Iraq and terrorism were weak or unprovable, and Iraq's dismal human rights record would not constitute sufficient grounds for war in the eyes of the UN and its many member dictatorships.
The resolution, UN resolution 1441, was passed on November 8 after seven weeks of diplomatic negotiation, particularly with France, which had close commercial ties with Iraq. It required Saddam to readmit weapons inspectors and to provide a declaration giving a full accounting of all WMD programs within 30 days. If he failed in both of these tasks, he would be in "material breach" of the resolution, which would result in "serious consequences," i.e. war. Saddam, not being completely stupid, submitted the declaration and readmitted inspectors. This was much to the consternation of the Bush Administration, who had hoped that he would fail to comply so that he could be removed through military action, in accordance with their policy of regime change. In short, they were looking for Saddam to give them an excuse to remove him from power, and were disappointed when it seemed that he would give them no such easy opportunity.
So the Administration began to gather intelligence on Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors, as well as to continue to improve intelligence about Iraq itself. Blix had openly stated that he wanted to be conciliatory, low-key, and non-confrontational. Our spying certainly confirmed that; it revealed that Blix was not, in fact, doing all the things he said he was doing, and that moreover he was not reporting everything that he was doing.
On the Iraq front, George Tenet and John McLaughlin gathered the best of our intelligence and presented it to Bush, Cheney, and Rice on December 21, 2002. The presentation was to be The Case for Iraqi WMD. The presentation mentioned exactly one clear weapons violation -- an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a range of 500 kilometers. The UN had limited Iraqi UAVs to a range of 150 km, and the Iraqi weapons declaration had stated that its UAV had a range of only 80 km. The UAV was the only violation that we were able to confirm by intelligence; the remainder of the presentation was concerned with implications and inferences. After the presentation, Bush turned to Tenet and said, "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?" Tenet threw his arms in the air and said, "It's a slam dunk!" This convinced his skeptical listeners that pressure and ultimately war against Iraq was justified based on the threat.
The saga continues in Part 4.
