Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq (article)

[aseepish]

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85202/paul-r-pillar/intelligence-policy-and-the-war-in-iraq.html?mode=print

Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq
By Paul R. Pillar

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006
Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

PAUL R. PILLAR is on the faculty of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Concluding a long career in the Central Intelligence Agency, he served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

[gregimotis]

I don't know about this guy, but I sure thought they had WMD's - and so did everybody else. I was opposed to to the Iraq war, and I thought the WMD issue was a red herring from the beginning, but I never really doubted that Hussien didn't have some.

It doesn't even make sense that he wouldn't have anything at all that the U.S. could make a case on; furthermore, I can't believe every military country in the world doesn't have some something somewhere - even if it's just enough to experiment with anti-dotes.

It's just plain common sense.




Honestly, it's like strip searching BoarSpear - if you find one knife you might think you've got them all, but if you find NO knives then you have to suspect something is up.