Intelligence officials supporting the war in Iraq?

[gitfiddle]

I’m just curious, in reading Mike Sheuer’s Imperial Hubris and Through Our Enemies Eyes and in seeing interviews with Gary Schroen, I’m curious who, if anyone, in the intelligence community actually supported Bush entering Iraq. I’m not talking about the “Intelligence” that Bush used to support the war in Iraq, but the agents and specialists themselves.

I recall even the NIC came to Bush saying that if he entered Iraq that would only support terrorism.

Were there any supporters in the intelligence community?

I’m not suggesting that I don’t believe there could be, I’ve just not found any. All the intelligence agents I’ve seen/read, have said that Iraq is a mistake/distraction/catastrophe/etc.

[Sage_Rat]

A good while ago, I read an article in the Economist which reviewed the examination of “where the CIA went wrong” in terms of whether or not there was WMD. The result was that the CIA had the problems of 1) relying too much on long-distance, gadget based observation instead of undercover work and such, and 2) overestimating due to having underestimated in the 1st Gulf War. I believe that it wasn’t part of that article, but rather someone on this board who pointed out that one problem with the gadget-based observation was that monitoring phone-calls and such was a problem because Sadham’s own research groups were telling him that they were further along on development than they really were or were even capable of. So if Sadham himself thought he was close to having WMD, someone spying on his phone calls would also get the impression that he was close to having WMD.

So, given that we had to run a complete review on the CIA to figure out why they thought Sadham had WMD or was close to it–my guess would be that we can safely say at one point in time the CIA thought Sadham had WMD or was close to it.

[Sage_Rat]

Also I would wonder why it would matter whether members of the intelligence community agree with national policy? We have an NSA guy on this board and off the bat I would be more inclined to be believe he is a better cryptoanalyst than military tactitian before having seen him run some war games against a five-star general.

[AskNott]

According to this article in Rolling Stone,
[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/8798997?pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single7](The Man Who Sold The War)
somebody in the CIA supported the war enough to pay the Rendon Group $16 million to create a propaganda campaign to make everybody think it was a good idea.

It’s a fascinating article about perception management, deception, and manipulation of the news media.

Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as “perception management,” manipulating information – and, by extension, the news media – to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help “create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power.” Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name – the Iraqi National Congress – and served as their media guru and “senior adviser” as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.