Lots of kerfuffle these days over former CIA member Paul Pillar's Foreign Affairs magazine article re: intelligence and Iraq. Guillermo Christiansen, a 15 year CIA veteran and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is not impressed. In "Un-Intelligence: Dodgy disclosures from a former CIA officer," he notes:
"But let's put all that aside for the moment and conjecture that Mr. Pillar actually did change his mind about all that work he'd done, and that he really did think the intelligence didn't support the case for war. If that was truly so, no one was better positioned to make the case against war within the government than Mr. Pillar himself. He could have personally drafted a National Intelligence Estimate, or any number of other types of memoranda, for senior readers in government, recording for all in black and white what was really going on in Iraq. He could, furthermore, have shared that analysis with every single member of Congress by writing less-classified summaries of the conclusions, as is often done.
So why did Mr. Pillar fail to take these steps?...
The fact is, no other issue in the history of the CIA is as deserving of the title "Mother of all Intelligence Failures" as the debacle over the CIA's analysis of Iraq. Take your pick of the many studies that have tried to understand why the intelligence was so inaccurate, but the basic conclusion underlying all of them is the same: The CIA's analysis and collection on Iraq was flat-out wrong over the course of many years--first in missing the fact that Iraq had WMD before the Gulf War, and then, well, you know the rest.
Paul Pillar was right in the thick of the process and substance that reached those conclusions...."
It's a point that folks like Armed Liberal have raised on previous, analagous occasions, and it's a good one. Christiansen also notes Pillar's political orientation (a fact that might be worth more honest disclosure from Pillar), and rips him - properly, IMO - for making the CIA even less likely to be listened to in future by policymakers on both sides of the aisle. You've got both links, and can read both articles.
But here is another thought. The CIA analysis was right on target, but other action intervened to make it dated.
Like removal of WMD to a safer locations?
Guillermo Christiansen wisely uses a different approach, garrett, confining the thrust of his argument to its narrowest (i.e. most focused) level in order to make his point as strong as possible.
If what you write is true, then of course Pillar is in even worse trouble. But it isn't necessary to make that argument in order to contend that Pillar [a] has some real issues when one compares his current published analysis to his actual work while in his position of responsibility; and [b] represents conduct unbecoming for an ex-CIA officer that damages the agency as a whole with BOTH political parties.
To expand the piece with contentions beyond that runs 2 big risks:
1. Reduced credibility for the piece, as its argument is seen as weaker by those who may not accept the broader claims.
2. A very real danger of diverting discussion away from one's main points to one's (very) secondary points.
That's a bad argument strategy if one wishes to persuade.
This completely ignores the likelihood (particularly post-9/11) that Saddam would have armed a terrorist group rather than attacking the US directly. Which was the major concern of the administration. This next canard will be familiar to everybody:
As has been pointed out ad nauseum, Bush said that British Intelligence said that Iraq was "seeking" uranium, not "purchasing" it.
But the biggest problem with Pillar's perspective is that he seems to have forgotten that he works for the President. He seems to believe that the President has an obligation to present the CIA's analyses with their original intent and interpretation preserved, as if the President was acting as an academic journal. And he's offended that his work has been "politicized." This sort of ivory tower viewpoint underscores the ailments of the CIA.
"The fact is, no other issue in the history of the CIA is as deserving of the title "Mother of all Intelligence Failures" as the debacle over the CIA's analysis of Iraq. "
They did a pretty miserable job with the Soviet Union too.