Bad Intelligence (4/13/04)

I am sad and I am angry. It breaks my heart to see more and more American soldiers, relief workers and innocent Iraqis slaughtered every day. I don't want one more soldier to die, one more family to lose a son or daughter, one more husband or wife to lose a spouse, one more child to lose a parent -- here, or in Iraq, or in any other country whose citizens have been dragged into this tragic conflict. My heart breaks with each death and with each wounding, each maiming of our brave people.

But I grow angrier and angrier at the Bush administration's spin on the war and the 911 attacks, and they are inextricably linked. Last week, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice testified before the 911 commission. She stayed on the Bush administration's message that the poor intelligence prior to 911 was due to 'structural problems." We heard over and over again that legal and structural problems prevented intelligence agencies from sharing information. She also denied having knowledge of various agencies information and intelligence. But whatever bureaucratic structural problems existed, nothing prevented the President of the United States from talking with the directors of every intelligence agency and putting it all together. OK, this is all in hindsight.

But, given that the adminstration admits, or should I say blames, structural problems and claims intelligence was poor because of that, then why were they not extremely careful after 911 about acting on their supposed intelligence about Iraq's having weapons of mass destruction? They got a cabinet level Department of Homeland Security (which, by the way, they first opposed because the Democrats had proposed it); they got the Patriot Act; yet intelligence about Iraq continued to be a conflicting mess. In fact, in the fall of 2002 long before Bush went to war in 2003, the former head of the CIA's counter terrorism efforts warned that "cooked intelligence" (close quotes) was finding its way into official pronouncements.

After 9ll, and the indisputable fact that - for whatever reasons--our intelligence was not accurate, shouldn't that have made the administration even more alert to, and focused on, ensuring that information and the so-called "connecting of the dots" was accurate before going to war in Iraq? Instead, anyone who raised questions about the information, reasons for war, or any truculent Bush policy was immediately slimed. They were called unpatriotic, threatened, and subjected to every sort of character assassination. And, as we all know now, a vindictive administration official exposed a CIA operative because her husband had the audacity to tell the truth about faulty intelligence.

Intelligence. That word has several meanings. Currently it's most frequently used in referring to the gathering and analysis of information, particularly that of political and military value. Or, intelligence is an individual's ability to quickly understand, that is-- one's wisdom and sharpness. It's time to quit blaming bureaucracy and structural problems; where is our president's leadership? If we don't want one more person to die, one more crippled life, one more family to grieve, it's the intelligence of the President and his closest advisors that we must question.

- Judith Kohler

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