Comments on: Leftwing lessons from Langley about Iraq

By: Sunny Hundal

Sunny Hundal — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:50:05 +0000

Gracchi, this is a good piece, but I’m liable to agree with Metetone above in that you’re being very kind to Bush et al. There are of course genuine mistakes but it was obvious in the way people were being smeared left right and centre (the head of the IEAE, Valeria Plame) etc that the Bush team had an agenda and other pieces of evidence had to fit around it.

This doesn’t negate the need for good intelligence of course, but my view is that sometimes politicians create narratives and then look for evidence that fits into it, and ignore that which doesn’t. Rather like most partisan bloggers 🙂

By: Metatone

Metatone — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:35:56 +0000

Gracchi: I think you’re too kind to those in power on this issue. There will always be genuine mistakes in intelligence work, but Cheney (in particular through his setting up of alternative intelligence analysis bodies) put huge pressure on the CIA to come up with the “required answers” on Iraq.

LIkewise, there will always be cases where people hear what they want to hear (the Psychology of Military Incompetence is a good book on this) but there’s a difference between misinterpreting evidence and working actively to influence the evidence you are presented with.

George Bush was told what he was told in 2003 because he made (and his underlings) made it very clear in 2001-2 what they wanted to hear and that you would only be promoted if that’s what you said. So, in 2003, they were told what they wanted to hear.

By: Gracchi

Gracchi — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:22:39 +0000

Douglas maybe but the question is how we attain wisdom and that must be based on better knowledge- I don’t think just a lack of wisdom is the problem. Conor is a great guy but if he were told what George Bush was told in 2003 he would still have been making policy on the wrong premise about the facts of the world, even if it were true that he would not have done the same things. That’s what this is about, we depend on our intelligence services for information and therefore its vital that they are organised in such a way as to provide us with good information not bad information.

By: douglas clark

douglas clark — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 03:36:37 +0000

W.B. Yeats once said that the problem at the beggining of the Twentieth Century was that the centre would not hold. Assuming a Blairite, liberal, neo-conservative or even conservative foreign policy at the end of the century, the question is whether the international centre can hold.

No, it isn’t. It is whether wise folk, such as Conor Foley, have a grip on the policy. Or idiots. That is the choice.

By: edmund

edmund — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 03:04:11 +0000

here’s a better spelt version!

Interesting piece – i think it shows how intelligence sharing is central – and the key thing is to make intelligence services trust each other (which means giving them reason including guarees of secrecy)
Having said that to what degree should Bush and Cheney be peculiarly blamed for this(which is not to say they behaved perfectly far from it!) -after all the same attitudes on iraq were true under Clinton and Tenet was also ion charge them- surely part of the point is about the CIA leadership. having a particular viewpoint ( I don’t think just for external reasons-also from institutional inertia and credibly) which helped produce this.
And this works in many ways- see the first gulf war where they had no idea of how far advanced saddam’s programmes were- I think institutional overreaction to this humiliation is as much the course of the mistakes of the 2000’s as any other.

By: edmund

edmund — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 02:53:10 +0000

Inteisng piece – i think it shows how intlligence sharing is central – and the key thing is to make intellince services trust each other (which means giving them reason including guarees of secrecy)

having said that to what degree should Bush and Cheney be peculairy blamed for this-after all the same attitudes on iraq were true under Clinton and Tenet was also ion charge them- surely part of the point is about the CIA leadership. having a particular viewpoint ( I don’t think just for external reasons-also from instiutional inertia and credenbily) which helped produce this.

And this works in many ways- see the first gulf war where they had no idea of how far advanced saddam huessains programmes were- I think institutional overreacion to this humilation is as much the course of the mistakes of the 2000’s as any other.