Early Intelligence Doubts Ignored By Administration
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, The War On Terrorism, WarThere are many things Administrations have to consider when looking at intelligence from the enemy. One of the most important things is the credibility of the source. If there are serious doubts that the person is providing misinformation, it should be considered very seriously.
Now a new report has come out that suggests the Administration ignored warnings that detainee Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi’s testimony was inaccurate.
From the NY Times:
The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons.The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi’s credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi’s information as “credible’’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
See, this is the type of thing that gives me fits. If our intelligence community was warning Bush and company that the intelligence wasn’t Grade A stuff, then why were those opinions ignored?
I’ll tell you why. Because they wanted to ignore those opinions and pay attention to the ones that built their case. And that is why we people like me feel like we were misled.
And let it be clear that Libi’s statements weren’t the only ones that were questioned by our intelligence community.
Mr. Libi was not alone among intelligence sources later determined to have been fabricating accounts. Among others, an Iraqi exile whose code name was Curveball was the primary source for what proved to be false information about Iraq and mobile biological weapons labs. And American military officials cultivated ties with Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group, who has been accused of feeding the Pentagon misleading information in urging war.
I’m sure many will just accuse me of playing the blame game. So be it. I’d rather talk about this stuff now so it doesn’t ever happen again. Naive? Perhaps, but I love this country and I don’t want to see it lose any more credibility on the world stage.
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November 7th, 2005 at 8:38 am
I can’t blame the NY Times for doing their best to spin this report into something big, but frankly this dog won’t hunt. Their headline isn’t even supported by the facts they present. There’s no indication that anyone in the intelligence services worked to get this report out there, or that they considered it credible. If so, they wouldn’t have waited until 2004 to discredit Libi. If a Senate investigation may not have seen the report in 2004, after Libi was discredited, what makes us think that the intelligence community would have made sure the administration had seen it in 2002 when he was still seen as at least somewhat credible?
It’s come to light that the US intelligence community was at best very sloppy in handling other aspects of the WMD investigation (Wilson’s trip to Niger being a prime example) so why would this revelation, which even the intelligence community didn’t believe at the time, be heeded by the administration?
There were plenty of signals that Iraq was not an immediate threat at the time, but this one hardly stands out above the others.
November 7th, 2005 at 9:59 am
BOA, with all due respect, did you read the story? No evidence they even saw it? The story addresses this in a very clear manner:
Did you miss that part?
November 7th, 2005 at 11:47 am
I never said there was no evidence the administration had seen the document. I pointed out that the intelligence community itself seemed to have no reason to make sure the administration had seen it. They made it available, but don’t appear to have put any priority on it.
November 7th, 2005 at 12:25 pm
Well, when the story says it was widely distributed, I think that means they put it in their hands. I’m not sure what else you’re looking for.
But to your broader point of the intelligence community not pushing the idea that this source wasn’t credible, well, I don’t think it’s really their job to push. They give their opinion and it’s up the Administration to take that opinion and consider it. Obviously they discounted it. That’s unfortunate considering all of these sources’ credibility are now being called into question. And moreover, what it points to is that this Administration felt they had to do something regardless of the disenting voices. That scares me because that means they’ll justify anything with, “We’re just trying to protect the American people.”
I mean, does anybody remember what the road to hell is paved with?
November 7th, 2005 at 12:35 pm
Ah, were you taking exception to my “Their headline isn’t even supported by the facts they present.” statement? I’ll concede that point. There is support in the article for the headline, even it falls far short of proof.
November 7th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
Yes, I was. Thanks for the clarification.
November 7th, 2005 at 4:04 pm
Justin,
“See, this is the type of thing that gives me fits. If our intelligence community was warning Bush and company that the intelligence wasn’t Grade A stuff, then why were those opinions ignored?
I’ll tell you why. Because they wanted to ignore those opinions and pay attention to the ones that built their case. And that is why we people like me feel like we were misled.”
This is what I don’t understand, you claim that it was ignored by the Administration because they wanted to ‘build their case’. How can you make that claim? Just because somebody else placed more ‘importance’ on one piece of intelligence than another does not mean that it was ‘ignored’. Maybe they weighed the reports and in the final ‘cost analysis’ decided that they couldn’t take the chance…
Our intelligence for this conflict didn’t just start in 2001, it goes back to 1991… it has been built up over time with each layer building on the last one. Just because this person’s ‘credibility’ was questioned certainly doesn’t mean that there wasn’t other ‘reports’ where the credibility wasn’t questioned.
You are having fits because it is a Republican President and not a Democrat. Did you have fits when Clinton used the ‘mass graves’ in Kosovo as a reason to go it alone and then we find that there weren’t really ‘mass graves’ and all of the hype was just that ‘hype’? How about the indiscriminate bombing in Kosovo killing civilians and soldiers alike? How about the fact that we ‘didn’t have an exit strategy’ and we are still there after 7 or 8 years?
I didn’t have ‘fits’ over it because I understand that intelligence is basically listening to rumors and asking questions, then this information is pooled and analysist make ‘educated guesses’ about what it means. I certainly didn’t go around claiming that Clinton ‘lied’ about it just because of some hyped intelligence.
If you want people to take the claims of Bush lied seriously you need to show that Bush ‘knew’ that there were no WMD’s. If you can’t do that then all you can show is that you are unhappy with Bush’s decision. In order to ‘lie’ about something you have to know the truth, if you don’t then it is a mistake and not a lie.
November 7th, 2005 at 4:55 pm
Show me one war in American history that wasn’t based on “building a case.”
Oh, you don’t have to like the war, or any war, but what makes this one so special? Give California back to Mexico, secede the Pacific to imperial Japan, re-enslave most American blacks, and re-attach the United States to the British Empire, if you like.
November 7th, 2005 at 6:56 pm
It’s like I’ve been finding myself saying more and more of late: no war is started over one reason. It’s started over at least a hundred, and closer to a hundred thousand.
A war started over one reason is a war started by one person, and waged by one person, and is typically called “disorderly conduct at a local bar” or something.
Wars ARE cited by media sources, I find, as having started by some spark event (e.g. shooting Archduke Ferdinand), tossed into a powderkeg that is mentioned only in history texts (e.g. ever-mounting military buildups and international alliances along two major lines). In the case of Iraq, I believe the WMD was mentioned too much, Saddam’s repeated violations of UN resolutions and human rights abuses were mentioned too little, there was technically no spark event (unless you count a secondary spark from 9/11), and many in the Bush administration and the Western world in general granted enough ear to the argument that the best way to fight terrorism was to go after the terrorists’ nesting grounds that the war actually happened - but some flash event also had to be given, even if it meant buttressing a relatively weak one.
November 7th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
Yeah, you know, cause that’s exactly what I’ve said on this blog…jeez Cal…
Listen, as news like this continues to come out, and as people like Colin Powell actually publicly admit that the case they built embarassed him, it points to a very flawed pre-war judgement on WMDs AND links to Al Qaeda. In other words, if you’re the Administration pre-war and you pay attention to all the stuff that makes your case, and ignore all the stuff that takes away from it, you’re playing is some very dishonest territory and it will most likely get you in trouble. And guess what…
I mean, honestly, stuff like this doesn’t give any of you people pause about their judgement? And if not, then why not? I’m speaking up because I want my government officials to be honest with themselves so they can be honest with the people they’re trying to protect.
November 8th, 2005 at 4:19 am
I don’t give a rat’s ass about Bush, one way or another. If he goes down in history as a bum president, so what? If the Republican Party takes a dive, I don’t really care. If he ends up on Mount Rushmore, that’s great, too. So long as we win this war.
So many people in blogland seem to turn everything back to politics. Screw politics. I wrote before the 2004 election that if some god of history came down and offered me a choice: success in Iraq and electoral defeat of Bush, or Bush victory and a stalemate in Iraq, I’d take choice “A” without hesitation.
My words from 2002-03 are still up there. I didn’t erase them. I even broke them out into special Web pages so people could compare them to whatever I say now. It’s all on the record.
I never thought there was an Iraq-al Qaida link worth mentioning. Except that Osama usually listed the sufferings of Iraqis among his grudges against the West. Seemed to me then the administration was throwing everything at the jury (the U.N., mostly) in hopes something would stick.
Like everyone else, I thought Saddam had some nasty stuff up his sleeve. How much? How nasty? Who knew? Only a war was going to tell us for sure.
But in both of those cases, my decision to support the attack was based on a risk I didn’t want to take. What if there’s a 90 percent chance Saddam has a nuclear weapon and he will give it to al Qaida within a year? Everyone except Chomsky and Moore goes to war on that one. What if there’s a 2 percent chance? Where’s your line drawn?
Factor in the humanitarian/anti-totalitarian justification, and the “drain the swamp” argument, and that’s a brief, over-simplified version of how I was convinced.
Notice that none of this depends on the administration being right about yellowcake and sundry other BS that’s now held up, repeatedly, with horrified cries of “Bush lied to you; whuy don’t you admit you were fooled?”
Some people can’t get over the idea that some other people make their decisions without reference to what political leaders tell them. That, though we may be aware of what the mouths are satying, we also can think it out for ourselves. You go to war with the president you’ve got.
November 8th, 2005 at 8:50 am
“In other words, if you’re the Administration pre-war and you pay attention to all the stuff that makes your case, and ignore all the stuff that takes away from it, you’re playing is some very dishonest territory and it will most likely get you in trouble. And guess what…
I mean, honestly, stuff like this doesn’t give any of you people pause about their judgement? And if not, then why not? I’m speaking up because I want my government officials to be honest with themselves so they can be honest with the people they’re trying to protect.”
Justin,
I honestly don’t believe that they ‘ignored’ anything. I believe that each piece of intelligence was weighed against the others and a decison was made. If you have 5000 reports that say he has WMD’s and you get 500 reports that say that they don’t believe that he does have WMD’s, in a post 9-11 world… do you take that chance?
In light of all of the WMD’s that were catalogued previously that Saddam didn’t provide any ‘proof’ of destruction for…. his actions towards weapons inspectors…. etc. How much of a chance are you willing to take? When we have heard that Saddam had WMD’s for 14 or 15 years and he didn’t provide the ‘proof’ that he destroyed them, I would have been upset if I didn’t think that our government was taking it seriously.
How about you demand ‘honesty’ from the Democrat side of the aisle… they have been saying for years that Saddam had the WMD’s…. they even used that arguement against our troops being on the ground because they claimed that Saddam would use them against our troops. Now that we have been in Iraq and have been searching for WMD’s (of which we did find some, but apparently not enough to satisfy the political party out of power - gotta get your political points somehow) now they want to pretend that ‘Bush Lied’…. that Bush was the only one that believed that Saddam had WMD’s…. this is such BULLSHIT!!! I have been so disgusted by them that I would never vote for one again, not even for pooper-scooper in a circus!!!! They have constantly lied and misrepresented everything, they use our soldier’s deaths as ‘political fodder’, they exaggerate claims of torture by our soldiers and try to paint them as the ‘bad guy’, as if panties on their heads is equal to cutting off a head.
Personally, Bush’s theory of fighting terrorism makes sense to me. His theory of fighting them over there as opposed to here also makes sense to me. If you have a bee hive in your wall you don’t kill them one at a time as they come into your house, you take out the nest.
After years of being attacked by terrorists that culminated in 9/11, I just don’t think that the old way of doing things was working…. the attacks were becoming more frequent and bold.
Removing these people from the the oppression they were under has already led to advancements in the Middle East. You have Libya that turned over their weapons program, you have Syria leaving Lebanon and they are choosing freedom for themselves, Iraq has had several elections and have voted for a constitution. We have only been there 2 years and look at the progress that has been made already.
November 8th, 2005 at 8:51 am
I completely agree with this. It’s not about Bush anymore. It’s about competence, and these guys seem to me to have a lack of it SIMPLY because it appears as if they ignored crucial evidence to the contrary of their argument.
But then you point out…
I know, which is why we come to so many crossroads on this issue. It’s not about that for me, since I don’t think terrorists really called Iraq a safe haven. And that’s what this war on terrorism is all about: going after the terrorists.
I don’t deal in percentages, I deal in gut. When I was presented this case, my gut called BS. It had nothing to do with politics. I fully supported the war in Afghanistan because it was demonstrably clear to me they were harboring terrorists and unashamedly so. And yes, when we targeted Saddam and they told me he had restarted his weapons programs and probably had nuclear materials, I was on board. But then I kept hearing rhetoric instead of evidence. And I started to get REAL nervous that we didn’t have the goods on this guy. In it’s place we had conjecture and guesses. And then Colin Powell went to the UN with that laughably bad evidence. Illustrations? Are you kidding me?!?
And then we sent the weapons inspectors in. And he started DESTROYING HIS MISSILES!!! And then we didn’t let the weapons inspectors finish their job. It all added up to me like this Administration didn’t care about disarmament. But see, that doesn’t matter in your perception because of the humanitartian angle. Well, I understand where you’re coming from with that, but we didn’t send humantarian inspectors into the country to find evidence of more atrocities. This war was about WMDs. You know it and I know it. Just because after the fact we can sit back and say we gave these people some form of democracy doesn’t change the initial rationale for war.
And I agree that you go to war with the President you’ve got, but sometimes the President you’ve got wants to go to war regardless of the evidence you’ve got. That’s what scares me about Bush and I think it should at least give you some pause.
November 8th, 2005 at 3:13 pm
It’s called “cheat and retreat.” Saddam was the Reggie Jackson of that game. If you somehow want to blame the Bush Administration for that, or believe that this time, Saddam really, really means it, and that he cared about disarmament but Bush didn’t, then you’ve got a harder case to sell than Colin Powell did.
The “international law” that Kerry and so many other Democrats so worship does not allow a case to be made for going to war to save the people of a country from their own dictator. He can murder them down to the last child without the U.N. lifting a finger. Bush made his international case based on what the “international law” would accept as a rationale — the violation of Saddam’s post-1991 treaty obligations regarding weapons. It was a sloppy case, poorly made, but it was the only one available in that court.
The American people are by and large pragmatic, like most people in most nations, and would not support an offensive war SOLELY for humanitarian purposes. None but a handful in the North went to war in 1861 to free the slaves, and liberation of the concentration camps was more an afterthought than a cause for World War II. Any thinking president knows this and wraps humanitarian motives in plenty of practical considerations.
For me, it would have been enough to say, this is a chance we can’t take; we can’t sit through another 30 years of playing footsie with Saddam and Qsai and Uday over nukes, especially since the international controls are breaking down right and left.
Of course it’s about WMDs — it’s about Saddam’s intense desire to get them, his ability via il-gained oil-for-food wealth to pay for them, and his proven track record of using them stupidly. That’s what I arrived at on my own. See? Didn’t need no Dick Cheney whispering in my ear.
Bush and his aides, for some reason, chose to take the prosecuting attorney route, and push evidence harder than it warranted in search of a conviction. Now they have to explain themselves. Tough for them. Seems like the system is working pretty well in that regard. You think this president is going to have it even easier the next time he proposes a war? Ho, boy.
November 8th, 2005 at 4:05 pm
I never said Saddam cared more about disarmament than Bush. That’s comparing apples and baseballs.
But he was destroying his missiles when we said, “Nope, we’re coming in.” Now, I don’t know about you, but it feels like Bush’s REAL reason is the one you’re putting forth. It was much more about the neo-con doctrine. You think this is justified. Okay, and yet…
See. this is exactly my point. Their credibility has been wounded, and therefore they’ve hurt our chances to prosecute the war on terror in the most effective manner. I feel for the people of Iraq and what they’ve been through, but I don’t care if they get freedom if it means our country is less safe because we attacked a country that didn’t attack us. This has been the Left’s contention all along about Iraq: right war at the wrong time and now we’re weakened to fight the next fight.
Didn’t make any sense to me then and is still hard to justify after the fact.
November 8th, 2005 at 5:50 pm
I’m not seeing the threat Saddam posed with nuclear arms? What was the issue? He did not have the missile capabilities to come anywhere near the states unlike North Korea. Why did we go for that axis of evil power then? Simple, it’s easier to win an air campaign in the desert, and we saw the way his army would respond. Cal- I think you’re right, it doesn’t matter what this administration did to get us stuck there, but it would be nice if we could finish it and not leave Iraq worse than we found it. And at the moment that’s where we’re heading. We needed more troops from the start, and this administration ignored that fact. Their Neo-con head men made promises and most of them came true, but they greatly underestimated the size of the force needed and the response of the people to the occupation. We can blame Bush for that.
November 8th, 2005 at 5:55 pm
Blame Bush all you want. If the war was over and everyone was home safe, I might be doing it, too. I’m just saying it’s a mistake to make that your primary focus in life right now, and the primary motivator in your political reckoning.
November 8th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
It’s not a primary motivator, but is it on my mind? You bet.