How Slowly Grind The Gears
It is gratifying to see many of the big news stories lately. Gratifying, and yet also infuriating and depressing.
Case in point: this morning the Washington Post has a story about the Pentagon Inspector General's report detailing the purposeful manipulation of pre-war intelligence in the office run by Douglas Feith.
While the Pentagon IG took pains to note that Feith had been authorized to conduct his activities, and claimed there was nothing illegal involved, Senator Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, thinks differently. There is, after all, a long-standing law that says the Senate Intelligence Committee has to be told about intelligence activities. Says Rockefeller:
In today's article:
In the meantime, thousands have died. We have plunged a region into chaos, spent billions for nothing and ruined our national standing in the world.
The administration and its allies have used "bad intelligence" as their excuse for having gotten us into Iraq. But it wasn't the intelligence that got us into the war. The actual intelligence wasn't enough.
The administration created an office in the Pentagon to create 'alternate intelligence' that expressly ignored what the rest of the intelligence community thought, and told Cheney and others what they wanted to be told.
Cheney and others took those fabrications and pounded them into everyone's ears. Yet, even the man charged with creating the lies suggests he didn't believe it to be true at the time.
Mark Twain is reputed to have said that "a lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." In the present day, the lie can not only travel halfway round the world, it can start a war there and kill thousands and thousands of people, while the truth is still working on finding its second shoe.
Which is something to keep in mind when reading reports like this one:
Case in point: this morning the Washington Post has a story about the Pentagon Inspector General's report detailing the purposeful manipulation of pre-war intelligence in the office run by Douglas Feith.
Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general.The report, I admit, is quite damning, and Feith's comments about it are worthy of Alice's Red Queen.
"It was from the start a criticism of the consensus of the intelligence community, and in presenting it I was not endorsing its substance."(In other words, "I was just trying to say something no one, including myself, believed.")
While the Pentagon IG took pains to note that Feith had been authorized to conduct his activities, and claimed there was nothing illegal involved, Senator Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, thinks differently. There is, after all, a long-standing law that says the Senate Intelligence Committee has to be told about intelligence activities. Says Rockefeller:
The IG has concluded that this office was engaged in intelligence activities. The Senate Intelligence Committee was never informed of these activities. Whether these actions were authorized or not, it appears that they were not in compliance with the law.All of which is great. Absolutely. Still, readers of this blog in October, 2004 may be feeling a sense of deja vu. They've read about Feith's work before:
In the coming days, I will carefully review all aspects of the report and will consult with Vice Chairman Bond to determine whether any additional action by the Senate Intelligence Committee is warranted.
WASHINGTON As recently as January 2004, a top Defense Department official misrepresented to Congress the view of American intelligence agencies about the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, according to classified documents described in a new report by a Senate Democrat.Better late then never, I suppose.
The report said that a classified document prepared by Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, did not accurately reflect the intelligence agencies' assessment of the relationship, despite a Pentagon claim that it did.
In issuing the report, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he would ask the panel to take "appropriate action" against Feith. Levin described the Jan. 15 communication from Feith as part of a pattern in which the Defense Department official, in briefings for Congress and the White House, repeatedly described the ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda as far more significant and extensive than the intelligence agencies had assessed.
In today's article:
The summary document confirmed a range of accusations that Levin had leveled against Feith's office, alleging inaccurate work.So, years after the original fabrications, and years after the fabrications were made public, we finally have an official in the administration acknowledging what was happening. It's an important milestone. But it will still be an indefinite period of time before criminal charges are brought, and even longer for the trials.
Feith's office, it said, drew on "both reliable and unreliable" intelligence reports in 2002 to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq "that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration."
It stated that the office produced intelligence assessments "inconsistent" with the U.S. intelligence community consensus, calling those actions "inappropriate" because the assessments purported to be "intelligence products" but were far more conclusive than the consensus view.
In particular, the summary cited the defense policy office's preparation of slides describing as a "known contact" an alleged 2001 meeting in Prague between Mohamed Atta, the leader of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and an Iraqi intelligence officer.
That claim figured heavily in statements by Cheney and other senior administration officials alleging a link between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime, but it has since been discredited.
In the meantime, thousands have died. We have plunged a region into chaos, spent billions for nothing and ruined our national standing in the world.
The administration and its allies have used "bad intelligence" as their excuse for having gotten us into Iraq. But it wasn't the intelligence that got us into the war. The actual intelligence wasn't enough.
The administration created an office in the Pentagon to create 'alternate intelligence' that expressly ignored what the rest of the intelligence community thought, and told Cheney and others what they wanted to be told.
Cheney and others took those fabrications and pounded them into everyone's ears. Yet, even the man charged with creating the lies suggests he didn't believe it to be true at the time.
Mark Twain is reputed to have said that "a lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." In the present day, the lie can not only travel halfway round the world, it can start a war there and kill thousands and thousands of people, while the truth is still working on finding its second shoe.
Which is something to keep in mind when reading reports like this one:
SEVILLE, Spain (AP) - Serial numbers and markings on explosives used in Iraq provide "pretty good" evidence that Iran is providing either weapons or technology for militants there, Defense Secretary Robert Gates asserted Friday.
Offering some of the first public details of evidence the military has collected, Gates said, "I think there's some serial numbers, there may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found," that point to Iran.
posted by Paul at 8:28 AM |
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