CIA failure and the Iraq War: What will be the Adminstration's reaction?

Great Debates
1

A Senate committee reports that S. intelligence agencies overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, relied on dubious sources and ignored contrary evidence in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

For many of us on this board, this is not news at all.

Those of us “keeping the faith” may not believe the report and still think we will turn up WMD eventually.

And then others (hopefully an insignificant minority) may believe the report and still believe the war was entirely justified.

I’m wondering what the Adminstration’s position is. If they accept the report as accurate, then won’t they be admitting they–and all of us–were duped? Won’t that make them look dumb, especially since we all still remember those confident assertions from them that WMD would turn up? But on the other hand, accepting the report would also help them save face a little, right? It would facilitate the Adminstration’s bad habit of eschewing responsibility: It’s not our fault we thought there was a “grave and gathering” threat in Iraq. It’s their fault. But if it’s the CIA’s fault for our overestimation of Iraq’s threat…and the CIA is also (presumably) gathering information about future terroristic threats…then why should the American public trust the Adminstration when it announces we’re at OMG TERROR ALERT ORANGISH RED!!
Things might be easier for the Administration if it just ignored or discounted the Senate committee’s report, but would the public (including the press) allow them to do that?

Bolding mine.

Some questions I have:

  1. What will be the Administration’s response to the Senate committee’s report? There will be spin, no doubt, but will it be as convincing (smirk) as the bolded part above?
  2. We know how the anti-Bushies feel about this, but what about Bush supporters? War supporters? Will people change their minds about the war with this information?
  3. How will this report affect the gameplan in Iraq?
  4. How will this report affect the CIA? How should it?
2

I think the administration will continue with their line that Sadam was bad, that he had used WMDs before, and that we had to remove him so he wouldn’t do so again.

Support for the war has been eroding steadily for some months, but I still think it has more to do with the actual situation in Iraq than these reports. I’m not saying that’s the right response, but I think if, for example, we captured al-Zarqawi next week support for the war would go up.

Pretty irrelavent. We have to finish the job. No serious politician is aruing otherwise.

More support for human intelligence, but the CIA has lost a lot of credibility.

I honestly don’t think Bush is going to be phased by this. He will continue to say what he’s said all along, and brush aside comments about no evidence for WMDs. He’s comfortable with his position, and I don’t think he feels any need to rejustify his actions. Call that confidence or stupidity, but it’s the way he is.

What will be interesting is whether or not Kerry will say that he would not have voted for the war resolution if he knew what we know now. I’m certain he’ll be asked it, and it’ll be a very dicey issue for him. He’s danced around this for some time now, but he’s going to be pressed more and more. I’m guessing he’ll say he still would have voted for the resolution until and unless the poll number show support for the war dropping to well below 50%.

3
  1. How will this report affect the CIA? How should it?

I expect that Bush will want to wait for the findings of his own independent commission on American intelligence capabilities before making major changes at the CIA. Their report is due out March 31, 2005.

4

At this point, I’d say that JMace take on the Bush reponse is accurate, but only up to the point of licking their finger and testing the wind. If outcry is muted, the Bushiviks will remain muted. Apparently its isn’t anything they feel compelled to answer immediatly. My guess is that somebody is very busy not checking the polls so they can not make their decision based on the polls they don’t consult.

But the other question is what about George Tenet? Is he prepared to committ seppuku in the Rose Garden? Will he stand there stoicly and let GeeDubya download fifty gigatons of crap on his head?

And, of course, what is this shit?! Its the CIA’s fault? No caveats, no maybes? Who’s zooming who, here? I can’t count how many times the words “CIA doubts” has crossed my eyes. And I very clearly remember Rummy convening his very own super-secret intelligence team precisely because the CIA wasn’t “on board.” And now they look us square in the eye and say the CIA convinced them, against their better judgement?

I kinda expect GeeDubya to echo Chalabi’s “heroes in error” Bushwah, how we did the right things for the wrong reason but that makes everything just peachy. There may be some wording that hints at the implication of suggesting that the President was, technically, “wrong” and if he were, in the strictest interpretation, “wrong”, then he more or less, sort of, “apologizes”. If you want to look at it like that.

“I accept the responsibility, but not the blame” - RM Nixon

5

This is a little off the OP, but does anyone imagine the intelligence analysts were working in a vacuum? That they had no idea of what answer the politicians up the chain of command wanted? That they didn’t know that their job was not to accurately analyze and report, but instead to produce a justification for a plan already made? Groupthink, indeed.

  1. The administration is already saying that the report is unimportant, falling back on “Saddam was bad”.

  2. I don’t see it having that much effect now on Bush or war supporters. The report only makes official what has been obvious for some time.

  3. It shouldn’t affect the gameplan in Iraq. The plan, under either Bush or Kerry, should be to get us out as quickly and cleanly as possible, while leaving behind as small a mess as possible.

  4. Heads will roll at the CIA. Somebody will have to be blamed, deservedly or not.

6

No, I think John’s right in general: there will be no big outcry, and Bush will continue to get away with the sort of fuzzy illogic demonstrated in the above interview to dodge press questions.

That’s why he resigned, to take the crap - but not commit seppuku. Although Bush will fuzz things there - he’ll say it was the CIA’s fault, but not really Tenet’s, and besides, he asked Tenet to resign, which shows he’s addressing the problem. (IOW, I’m not expecting Bush to make more sense than usual. But the press will let him get away with it, as always.)

What, just one super-secret intelligence team? 'Luci, my friend, where have you been? There was the Office of Special Plans, there was the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, and I don’t know what-all else. I can’t keep up, either.

At any rate, it was well known back in 2002 that the CIA was dragging its heels in providing what the Administration wanted - intel to justify invading Iraq.

We can’t expect Bush to have digested T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, of course. (“The last temptation is the greatest treason, to do the right thing for the wrong reason.”)

But speaking of Chalabi, exactly why haven’t we arrested him, given that we apparently have good reason to believe he told the Iranians we’d broken their code, not to mention all the false intelligence he fed us?

The scary thing is, I’d trade Bush for Nixon in a freakin’ heartbeat. They’re both evil, but at least Nixon was both competent and genuinely intelligent.

It really never occured to me, until the past year or so, that I’d live to see a President worse than Nixon. And it isn’t like it’s even a close contest.

7

It’s all their fault! They did it! Weren’t us.

8

Does anyone here expect the CIA to sit back and take all this shit and not fire back?

Does anyone think the CIA will wait until after the election for the Committee to release its findings on Administration chicanery?

I think the most interesting thing coming up is just how the IntelAgencies will react.

If I were Bush, I would be very, very worried. I fully expect him and all his minions to be slimed like no Administration has been slimed before.

I can hardly wait.

9

I think Hoagland’s original column in the October 20, 2002 Washington Post gives a better sense of the dynamic at the time:

CIA’s New Old Iraq File

The above was published at about the same time that the CIA’s “Iraq and al Qaeda: A Murky Relationship” (never declassified? unavailable online?) became Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction

10

As I said before: does the report mention Chalabi in any extensive way? Does it explain his extensive involvement in recruiting the bogus sources that fed the CIA their info? Does it mention the involvement of key administration figures in making this happen, in pushing the CIA to override its doubts about such people?

No?

Then how can its authors claim that it’s worth a red cent? ole’ Rockyfeller doesn’t seem able to say it outright: but the fact that the report was explicitly limited so that any discussion of the administration’s involvement in the process was verboten makes any claim to a final conclusion or an honest picture of our intelligence failures a joke. They may have done a good job with picking out this or that piece, but the whole is rendered nonsense.

This, by the way, is the rationale of many former conservatives who are jumping ship. They don’t like Kerry’s policies at all, but they understand that even less than perfect policies are better than an outright disdain for serious policymaking.

11

Having read Mr Hoagland’s column about how the CID was finally getting it act together and putting the proper analysis on the Saddam –AlQida connection and had gotten in line with the view of President Bush, I wonder when we can expect a new column in which ‘ol Jim tells us how mistaken he was.

12

The report is a partisan document. It’s tailored to meet two necessities,

  • to have the appearance of being independent, and
  • to completely exonerate the elected administration.

Let’s not forget the administration has not only being fully briefed as to the findings well beforehand, it has also had a hand in them.

The findings; what do they achieve?

  • They dilute any responsibility or blame among the faceless bureaucracy.
  • They satisfy a large part of the constituency: The mood to feed is currently expressed using the officially sanctioned words:

“We weren’t going to take this lying down, we were going to show Osama we weren’t going to take any more of his attacks.”

Further the findings feed that part of the Bush constitutency that is pleased Bush comes off as none too shrewd, real man of the people stuff, doing his darn best against slick suited bureaucrats.

Likewise they’ll be *pleased * there isn’t any of that liberal, eastcoast, intellectual, evidence around when it was plain as day what a man had to do, and God support our boys in fighting those godless heathens way over. Lordy Amen.

13

The same thing it’s always been – Blame Someone Else™. Never mind Bush’s determination to get Saddam from Day 1, never mind the OSP cherry-picking data, never mind record profits for Halliburton, just lay it all on George Tenet’s porch.

I’ll settle for the CIA neutralizing Karl Rove’s arsenal of dirty tricks so George W. Bush can lose in a legitimate overwhelming landslide come November.

14 
There is a phrase from a democrat about if they had had this data before they the Congress wouldn't have supported the war. So yep... its basically about Scapegoat CIA (Tenet?) and Congress and Bush being absolved.

Like I said in the other thread... "staying the course" isn't about maintaining current policies... but "keep feeding them bull menu".

I really want to see how the intelligence community will take it. After all its like a collective spanking they are taking. I doubt any of the so called "nay sayers" who tried to shout above the crowd that Iraq didn't have WMD will either be promoted or put into positions of power within the CIA.

Finally in Fox News they put it clearly that Powell presented false info to the UN

15

My question: How is it that all across the 'net I’m reading the very same words used to defend Bush?

Currently it is , “standing up to Terrorism…we aren’t going to take any more of Osama’s attacks…”.

Where do these come from? Is there a propagana central that you can tune into for your updates? Answers please, however scurrilous.

16

Who is “the CIA”? Tenet has resigned, so I don’t see what you mean here.

I do. The CIA works for the president.

17

And of course we all know that no disgruntled employee (or former employee) of an agency like the CIA would ever leak any information to the press.

18

Former CIA director retired Adm. Stansfield Turner was asked about the “pressure on the CIA” this morning (10 July) on MSNBC. He responded that the Vice President made 10 trips to the CIA in Langley, VA in the months leading up to the Congress’ vote on a war resolution while the intelligence was being analyzed at the CIA. His wry comment was that this sort of Vice Presidential attention is highly unusual and might be interpreted by CIA analysts as wanting a particular outcome to the analysis.

19

Bush should do the honorable thing, just as Piers Morgan and Greg Dyke did.

20

As I understand it, Morgan was sacked, unlike Dyke, who resigned. Trust me, a lot of us are hoping to do a “Piers Morgan” on Bush, come November 2.

Richard Nixon notwithstanding, resigning in disgrace just isn’t the way things are done in our system (I think it’s safe to say that Nixon resigned only because it was patently obvious that he would be convicted by the Senate if his impeachment went forward). In this case, I’m glad that Bush isn’t resigning - it would yield a very scary two words: President Cheney.