The failed intelligence that wasn't

Two CIA officers quoted in this Salon article say that they briefed President Bush about Iraq's unconditional weapons capability. Based on interviews with the Iraqi foreign minister, Naji Sabri, by then a paid CIA source, the Iraqis had no WMDs.

We can only hope that more details emerge than what Sidney Blumenthal provided in his two-page Salon piece. This claim needs a lot more scrutiny. How thoroughly did the CIA corroborate Sabri's story? How was this individual fragment in the larger intelligence mosaic presented?

In other words, we need to treat the two CIA officers quoted in the article with greater care than the Bush Administration treated "Curveball," the taxi driver who claimed to be an engineer in Iraq's nuclear program. However Blumenthal's story plays out, one thing is for sure: in 2002 and 2003, the President and his top advisers heard what they wanted to hear about Iraq.

Comments

[Phil]

And reading the article, one might get an inkling of why France became so opposed to invasion?

[Irving Isler]

And then we can only hope the administration is tried for crimes against humanity.

Wishful thinking however.

[Antiquated Tory]

Dear Irving,
Would you et al please stop it with the 'crimes against humanity' schtick? Would you please get it through your heads that you have to do a lot more than just start a dubiously legitimate war that goes wrong in order for that sort of thing to apply? Because, you know, people in governments are going to want to be able to start wars if they think they are necessary or profitable. You have to go clearly and unambiguously beyond the pale (and though you may think W is out there with Chas Taylor etc, it is not unambiguous) and you have to seriously piss off everybody with power before that applies. Going on about trying W for 'crimes against humanity' just makes you look like a flake. In the words of Morrisey, maybe in the next world.
On the other hand, I do wish that W would be impeached for gross incompetence, which is certainly within the Constitution and certainly applies. I don't think the 06 elections were nearly a severe enough political penalty.

[WMK]

Talk about misuse of "intelligence" - the Salon article recycles a story that is over a year old and does so without context. See for example(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11927856/). If you look at what was said a year ago about what Sabri actually gave his handlers the story is much more complex -

"The CIA said if Saddam obtained enriched uranium, he could build a nuclear bomb in "several months to a year." Sabri said Saddam desperately wanted a bomb, but would need much more time than that. Sabri was more accurate....On the issue of chemical weapons, the CIA said Saddam had stockpiled as much as "500 metric tons of chemical warfare agents" and had "renewed" production of deadly agents. Sabri said Iraq had stockpiled weapons and had "poison gas" left over from the first Gulf War. Both Sabri and the agency were wrong."

Note: Sabri said "Iraq had stockpiled weapons." It seems to me that if one was charged with trying to determine the extent of a hidden program in a totalitarian country you would take information from the inner circle with a grain of salt. We had some experience with this kind of regime informant before. Recall the history of the Hussein Kamel defection in 1995 or 13 years of frustrated UN inspection reports (...cheat and retreat). These experiences would at least give one pause that if Sabri was aware of some WMD capability (regardless of the scale) - he might likely have only part of the story. The Bush administration played the odds in this case and assumed the worst! They were wrong but not lying about what they "knew."

It seems the administration's critics have become a strange reflection of the very kind of simplistic, pre-determined, and selective use of intelligence that they so emotionally accuse the WH of. Have we learned nothing.