A Different Kind of Intelligence Failure

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Registered: 03-25-2003
A Different Kind of Intelligence Failure
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Sat, 04-17-2004 - 8:45pm
"Intelligence failures are to blame, so we are told, for the tragedy of 9/11 and the unfolding catastrophe in Iraq. If the Bush administration had heeded its intelligence agencies, say its opponents, it might have prevented the 9/11 attacks and avoided its mishaps in Iraq. Administration officials, meanwhile, say that their intelligence was either not accurate or not "actionable." This finger-pointing reflects misconceptions about the nature of intelligence — and suggests an intelligence failure of a different sort..."

April 17, 2004

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

A Different Kind of Intelligence Failure

By ADLAI E. STEVENSON III

CHICAGO — Intelligence failures are to blame, so we are told, for the tragedy of 9/11 and the unfolding catastrophe in Iraq. If the Bush administration had heeded its intelligence agencies, say its opponents, it might have prevented the 9/11 attacks and avoided its mishaps in Iraq. Administration officials, meanwhile, say that their intelligence was either not accurate or not "actionable." This finger-pointing reflects misconceptions about the nature of intelligence — and suggests an intelligence failure of a different sort.

If one looks closely enough, there is generally a chance to see what lies ahead. For instance, shortly after the Six Day War in 1967, I trailed Israel's troops into the West Bank and Golan Heights and visited a Palestinian refugee camp. Ten years later I returned. By then — especially after Israel announced its plans to build settlements in the West Bank — anyone with experience in the region could foresee the dangers to come.

When I was in the Senate, I conducted a study of terrorism, which concluded in 1979 with predictions of "spectacular acts of disruption and destruction" in the United States and proposals for preventing them. These recommendations required no use of foreign intelligence. Similarly, the chaos in Iraq should come as no surprise to anyone with knowledge of Iraq, a quasi-state of tribes, religions, sects, ethnicities and foreign interests carved from the carcass of the Ottoman Empire.

Foreign intelligence supports foreign policy. Its priorities are determined by policy makers. Sometimes the products of foreign intelligence are tailored to fit the preconceptions of policy makers. Intelligence is often flawed. The intelligence agencies have conflicting and overlapping missions, lack central responsibility and are overwhelmed with information, much of it technical. It requires "production" — often without the necessary regional specialists and linguists.

Investigating the Iran intelligence failure in the late 1970's, I learned that the C.I.A. had no analyst who spoke Farsi. The agencies rely on foreign intelligence services, which support the policies of their own governments.

Foreign policy in the Bush administration reflects a lack of experience in the real world away from a Washington overrun with armchair polemicists and think-tank ideologues. Too many inhabitants of this world have no experience in the military, where one learns to expect the unexpected, or in international finance, where America's vulnerability also resides. This White House is well known for its hostility to curiosity and intellectual debate.

After all, terrorism is not a phenomenon of recent origin. Gavrilo Princip, the Serb nationalist who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, did not expect his gunshot to bring about the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He expected only a reaction — and the empire's reaction led to World War I and its own downfall. The United States government's reaction to the attacks of 9/11 could end up inflicting great damage on America.

The Bush administration demonstrates the point. One pre-emptive war against the dictator of a desert quasi-state crippled by international sanctions has stretched the American military thin. The United States is widely perceived to be waging war against Islam in the Middle East, a perception reinforced by the president's decision this week to support Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel and his settlement plan.

Meanwhile, the dollar — a barometer of confidence in the American economy and polity — has sunk against other currencies. In Spain, Argentina, Germany, South Korea and Pakistan, candidates win public office by denouncing or distancing themselves from the Bush administration. This record owes nothing to failures of intelligence.

Studies have recommended reforms of the intelligence community. But reform does not change the limited nature and function of intelligence. There is no substitute for the pragmatic intelligence of policy makers acquired from history and experience in the real world — and the courage to act on it.

Before 9/11, neoconservatives like Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Vice President Dick Cheney inhabited a world of contending great powers in which force and technology were transcendent. Terrorists armed with box cutters — and now Iraqis resisting the occupation — have exploded their fantasy. The failures of the Bush administration are not those of foreign intelligence but of a cerebral sort of intelligence.

Adlai E. Stevenson III is a former United States senator from Illinois.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/opinion/17STEV.html

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Wed, 04-21-2004 - 7:25pm
This quote I from the document I think is important: "Initiating a nuclear attack on the US or the USSR would invite the elimination of China as an industrial or military power, while an attack elsewhere still runs the risk of superpower response."

Clearly if China used nuclear weapons they eliminate themselves militarily...

minnie

Avatar for car_al
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Registered: 03-25-2003
Wed, 04-21-2004 - 11:11pm
<>

Actually, most of us – many pacifists included - believed that we were attacked on 9/11 by OBL & Al Qaeda and we fully supported the War on Terror that took us into Afghanistan. What we didn't support was taking the concentration from that War and instead pre-emptively attacking Iraq.

C

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Thu, 04-22-2004 - 9:59am
You can't have it both ways. The same people who are blaming President Bush for not doing something to stop 9-11 *before* it happened are also saying that she shouldn't have done something to stop another potentially more devastating attack from happening in the future.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Thu, 04-22-2004 - 10:12am
The same person who asked this question, "Why would a person lacking in the qualities that are required for this job be in the White House?" probably voted for Bill Clinton who admitted to "loathing" the military. How short memories are these days.

While on the topic of President Clinton/this war, here's an interesting article from the San Francisco Chronicle:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2003/12/21/EDGCK3Q5D11.DTL

Reconsidering Our Foreign Policy

War when we're not attacked -- Comparing Serbia with Iraq

Tom Campbell



Kosovo and Iraq are both instances of U.S. military action against a country that had not attacked us. The United States bombed Serbia for 79 days in 1999 -- until Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic gave up. The United States bombed and sent ground forces into Iraq in 2003 -- until Iraqi President Saddam Hussein gave up.

In comparing these two, it is worth noting that neither is at peace today. American troops still patrol Iraq; NATO troops still patrol the Serbian province of Kosovo, and they likely will continue to patrol for years to come.

Which situation posed a greater threat to international peace? What started the involvement in Iraq was Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It attacked, claimed to incorporate Kuwait and, during the Persian Gulf War, fired missiles into the territory of two U.S. allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel. After the cease-fire, Iraq expelled U.N. weapons inspectors whose presence it had agreed to as a condition of ending the Persian Gulf War.

By contrast, Serbia was never a threat to other countries. Whatever Serbia did to the people living in Kosovo, Kosovo was and remains, under American and international law, part of Serbia. Serbia had never attacked the United States or our allies, or any of its neighbors. Serbia never even retaliated when the United States was bombing its capital city, Belgrade.

Human-rights abuses were present in both Iraq and Serbia. The CIA documented that 2,000 people were killed by Milosevic in Kosovo in the years prior to the U.S. bombing. Saddam Hussein gassed, shot, tortured and starved hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens before the United States went to war to overthrow the dictator. The now regular unearthing of mass graves in Iraq compels the conclusion that Iraq, not Kosovo, presented the stronger human- rights justification for intervention.

Those who doubt the United States will exit Iraq anytime soon suspect that U.S. and British troops will have to stay for a long time to quell centuries-old Shiite, Sunni and Kurd hostility. The same has proved true for the need for U.S. and other NATO troops in Kosovo: NATO troops are now in their fifth year of occupation to protect both ethnic Serbs and Albanians from annihilating each other.

Critics fault President Bush for not obtaining prior U.N. approval for the recent Iraq war, forgetting that President Bill Clinton did not obtain prior U.N. approval to wage war over Kosovo, either. In Iraq, the U.N. Security Council had given open-ended authority in 1991 to the United States "to restore . . . security to the area." While one can argue whether that wording was sufficient to justify the United States' action 12 years later, President Clinton had nothing like that authority when he dropped the first bomb on Belgrade.

After the capitulation of Milosevic, the U.N. Security Council did pass a resolution recognizing the de facto status of the United States and NATO in Kosovo. The Clinton administration pointed to this as after-the-fact U.N. ratification, claiming that the international community condoned the action. The same can be said about Iraq: Just two months ago, the U.N. Security Council passed a similar resolution regarding the United States' and the United Kingdom's presence in Iraq.

Whatever international law says, what about legality under the U.S. Constitution? President Bush sought and obtained approval from Congress before acting in Iraq (and, in a separate, earlier vote, in Afghanistan). President Clinton never did. When I asked Madeleine Albright, President Clinton's secretary of state, about the constitutional legality in congressional hearings, she said the U.S. action in Kosovo wasn't "war," it was "armed conflict," and therefore no congressional approval was constitutionally needed. I asked her what the difference was; she replied that she would let the lawyers figure it out.

In terms of announced rationale, President Clinton said Serbia posed a threat to NATO's security. President Bush said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Both prior-announced justifications gave way to others as time passed, rationales that became based on human rights and self-determination in both places.

I can understand opposing U.S. action in both Iraq and Serbia. I can understand supporting it in both. I can understand concluding that, on grounds of human rights, attacks on U.S. allies, international law and U.S. Constitutional law, the war in Iraq was a clearer case than the war in Serbia. To support the decision to attack Serbia, but not Iraq, however, is illogical.

It seems that it comes down to this: To some, President Bush can do no good, and President Clinton could do no wrong. Loyalties to both Presidents Clinton and Bush excite the strong feelings of many, but personalizing American foreign policy impedes objective judgment.





iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Thu, 04-22-2004 - 10:20am
America has long been proud of the fact that we are a free society. In order for something to be done, we must give up some of our freedoms, sad but true. In 1979, we were not willing to give up any of our freedoms. Actually, not until 9-11 would any of us begin to consider this prospect. I personally opposed the Patriot Act until, this week, at which time I am now willing to consider investigating what it really says. I heard the president this week say that a judge still has to approve any "spying on people" before it is done, and that constitutional protections are in place. This made me open my mind to at least reading it and seeing what it is all about. Until then I would not have even considered it, *and that's AFTER 9-11*.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Thu, 04-22-2004 - 10:25am
Except for the fact that it's all speculation and opinion. I don't believe that *any* president only plans for the time he is in office. Even as self-serving as President Clinton proved to be I believe that his administration had long range goals. The same goes for all preceeding presidents before him.
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-05-2003
Thu, 04-22-2004 - 11:00am
I like the concept of the Patriot Act, I just think that there are a number of key parts of it that need to be overturned and/or changed.
Avatar for car_al
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Thu, 04-22-2004 - 6:25pm
There isn't a court in this country that would acquit you for attacking your neighbor and in the course of your attack accidentally killing one of his children, because you believed that he was planning to attack you in the future - even if you could show that ten years ago, he beat his own wife and children and that he still had or had the means to make the weapons he used on them and he had been making verbal threats to you.

C

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Thu, 04-22-2004 - 8:23pm
Do you remember Bernard Goetz, the guy who shot four people on the subway in New York and was acquitted because he felt threatened by them? That's really beside the point, but there really *is* a court in America that would acquit someone for this kind of thing...

9-11 changed everything about the way we view terrorism. That's the point. We can no longer just wait like sitting ducks for the next mass murder to happen before we react. When we see a real and gathering threat we must do something before it happens. Most of the same people who are against this action are also crying that we "didn't do something" before 9-11 to stop it. They are trying to have it both ways...


Edited 4/22/2004 8:25 pm ET ET by iminnie833

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-05-2003
Fri, 04-23-2004 - 8:51am

Most of the same people who are against this action are also crying that we "didn't do something" before 9-11 to stop it. They are trying to have it both ways...

Or you could FINALLY realize that there is a difference between "doing something" and "doing anything" to stop what you perceive as a threat.

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