Hear No Evil…
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The War On Terrorism, War
Iraq has gone sideways. Why? Well, we’re starting to get more and more stories about early warnings that were ignored.
Here’s another one, courtesy of Harper’s:
The New York Times and others have reported that in 2003, the CIA station chief in Baghdad authored several special field reports that offered extremely negative assessments of the situation on the ground in Iraqâ€â€?assessments that later proved to be accurate. The field reports, known as “Aardwolfs,â€Â? were angrily rejected by the White House. Their authorâ€â€?who I’m told was a highly regarded agency veteran named Gerry Meyerâ€â€?was soon pushed out of the CIA, in part because his reporting angered the See No Evil crowd within the Bush administration. “He was a good guy,â€Â? one recently retired CIA official said of Meyer, “well-wired in Baghdad, and he wrote a good report. But any time this administration gets bad news, they say the critics are assholes and defeatists, and off we go down the same path with more pressure on the accelerator.â€Â?
And lest you think this was an isolated incident, the guy who came after Gerry Meyer told the administration the same story and was also kicked to the curb in a most untoward fashion…
In 2004 Meyer was replaced with a new CIA station chief in Baghdad, who that year filed six Aardwolfs, which, sources told me, were collectively as pessimistic about the situation in Iraq as the ones sent by his predecessor. The station chief finished his assignment in December 2004; he was not fired, but according to one source is now “a pariah within the system.â€Â? Three other former intelligence officials gave me virtually identical accounts, with one saying the ex–station chief was “treated like shitâ€Â? and “farmed out.â€Â? (I was given the former station chief’s name and current position, but I am not publishing the information because he is still employed by the CIA.)
Well, hindsight is always 20/20. Of course these guys think they were right after the fact. Of course they think they had a point. But they’re just being defeatists….
Listen, this is a pattern with our current leadership. They hear dissent and they squash it.
Could that be why the President’s poll numbers are so low? Nawww….
This entry was posted on Friday, May 19th, 2006 and is filed under The War On Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 19th, 2006 at 11:13 am
Ever wonder how much BAD advise the administration also ignored? Not to defend the administration on their decisions in this war, but ignoring dissent is not always a bad thing.
May 19th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Alan,
IMO, ignoring dissent is almost always a bad thing, and in this case it is definately a bad thing.
The CIA Bahgdad station chief isn’t some government desk weenie job. In fact, it is a very important assignment and only a seasoned and talented professional should be given such an assignment. Unless you want to argue that either of these men were unqualified I can’t understand how you can condone the fact that their arguments/opinions were essentially ignored.
May 20th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
I agree with Alan. I feel like we’re picking and choosing which Cassandras to uphold. I keep hearing soldier after soldier talk about how they feel they’re making a real difference over there, and a lot of people over here don’t seem to want to listen to that dissent, either.