Fred Ikle reminds us that intelligence is useless unless politicians act on it. He also reminds us that intelligence will often be incomplete, especially in the modern age:
"These problems will not go away. The worldwide proliferation of WMD capabilities can be slowed down, but it cannot be stopped. It is high time that our body politic took this unpleasant fact on board. The globalization of science and technology will gradually, but ineluctably, spread the wherewithal for building mass destruction weapons. We are thus fated to confront a threat of a kind we have never faced before. And intertwined with this dismal fate is another predicament: Whatever the intelligence community can contribute regarding the WMD threat is severely limited by the unique aspects of mass-destruction weapons."
It gets worse...
VC Tim Oren has done some quick calculations based on technology advancement models; he thinks we have 20-25 years before we hit an "event horizon" around biological weapons. Ikle goes on to offer a very useful distinction between strategic & tactical intelligence, explain the difficulties WMDs present, and discuss the policy issues. He closes with some wise words:
"In any event, whether under the influence of hope or fear, the buck stops not with the intelligence community but with the policy makers. It is the president and Congress who must decide to take costly and dangerous actions, or accept the risks of inaction. It is these elected policy makers who must rally the people to give first priority to the survival of our country. Most Americans prefer to believe that the United States will have a bright future and think prophets of doom belong to decaying nations. This healthy frame of mind puts a ceiling on our tolerance for intelligence warnings about all sorts of cataclysmic terrorist attacks. Fair enough. As long as we don't shut our eyes in the sentry box."
UPDATE: Brian Dunn loks at the issue, too, and comes out with this logical and pithy summary at the end:
""Our only option is to forget about trying to establish clear proof of nuclear guilt and focus on the regimes. Your country is a collection of nutballs that make aggressive statements and you appear to be pursuing nuclear technology, missiles, and other weapons? Then your regime should be history and we will work for that result. We won't take the chance that you will get something that makes your threats real."
One of the angles that hampers intelligence on WMDs is what the US uncovered in Iraq - namely that Saddam was much better at covering his tracks than anyone thought, which is why we "didn't find WMDs in Iraq." Future intelligence on WMDs needs to keep in mind that an enemy state is very likely hiding something.
It's even more fundamental than that. The reason we have intelligence services at all is because other states hide things.
Just to speak of intelligence services, is to necessarily assume that state of affairs.
The reason we didn't find WMD in Iraq was because there were no WMD's in Iraq. Saddam was indeed hiding something - that his nuclear programs was a figment.
Bill Dodge, we found some 500 tons of weapons-grade uranium, chemical weapons labs, chemical weapons, missile testing sites, missiles, and voluminous documentation that Iraq not only had unconventional weapons but was streamlining its system precisely to hide it from outside inspection and make it look like they didn't have anything. Why people keep denying that he had unconventional weapons even though everything found in Iraq proves he did is beyond me.