In message , Dr. George O.
Bizzigotti writes
On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 08:25:26 +0000, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:
I'm an old-fashioned sort of guy: I like to see people (even
politicians) pick a story and stick to it; or accept that intel is not
perfect.

This appears to be the dirty little secret that everyone seems to be
ignoring; intelligence is by nature imperfect. The major intelligence
services all had a very hazy picture of the state of Iraqi WMDs, but
at some point they had to make a judgment of "do they or don't they?"
I'm not sure that policy makers themselves always understand the
ramifications of forcing intelligence services to arrive at "yes" or
"no" answers, but if any of them accept "maybe," it's news to me.

My concern is about how, in the UK at least, a reply of "maybe, and
worst-case is pretty horrid" became a simple straightforward certainty
of "Iraq has WME that are an immediate threat". That wasn't a
'worst-case possibility', it was reported as fact without contradiction.


Now, it can be claimed that the Government isn't responsible for what
the papers say, and there's a lot of truth there. But the Government
does have a lot of influence - official and unofficial - about what
information the papers use to produce their stories.

Parenthetically, I would suggest that the trouble embodied by the
above statement arises in that very, very few politicians are capable
of stating "it was reasonable at the time, but it turns out that I was
wrong." Most who have made that statement tend to undertake severe
career changes, so there is an immense Darwinian pressure to fudge,
although that can have adverse career consequences as well.

Perhaps I'm showing my advanced age by respecting John Nott: if not for
his disastrous decisions while Secretary of Defence, for his resignation
when the results of those decisions became clear.

I would much rather we'd had a wiser man at Defence (and again before
him), but Nott had the integrity to stand down when his planning
assumptions were shown to have been seriously incompatible with reality.
I admire his honesty if not his judgement.

And integrity _does_ mean accepting negative results of your decisions.
It's arguable that one reason Thatcher won the 1983 election so
decisively was that she had enough Falklands scapegoats (though the
self-destruction of the opposing parties was probably the main factor)

We may
_like_ our politicians to admit being fallible, but we tend to _vote_
for the ones claiming infallibility. (Whether the level of fallibility
exhibited by the Blair and Bush administrations on the subject of
Iraqi WMDs is worthy of voter forgiveness is a separate issue.)

It's not directly comparable in the UK, and I think this may be one of
the differences. From here it seems that the US was solidly behind war
with Iraq: there was significant opposition in the UK. Over here we were
led to the belief that invading Iraq was an urgent necessity.

Trouble is, at least over here, it appears that the answer was decided
before the intelligence was studied: we _were_ going to war with Iraq,
and the analysts were going to produce the answers to suit.

I would respectfully disagree with that statement, although I
acknowledge that it could turn out to be correct.

The respect is returned; I'm arguing from a UK perspective and
viewpoint. Easy to forget how different issues can look from overseas.

One apparent outcome of the Hutton enquiry here was that that
politicians _did_ adjust the wording of intelligence assessments to suit
their ends... the question being whether they "tightened up" or
"distorted" the presentation of what data was available. (As an
engineer, thinking of threaded fasteners, I ask "what's the difference?
One distorts _by_ tightening!" But I may be cynical)

An oft-ignored element from Hutton is that while Dr Kelly was apparently
concerned about the presentation of his data, he too never doubted that
Iraq at the very least lusted for WMEs even if they'd made short-term
sacrifices in the name of survival.

If that is the
appearance, why did the French, German, and Russian intelligence
services arrive at the same basic judgment (the Iraqis did retain
WMDs) when their governments had decided they were _not_ going to war.

One guess - lack of capability to provide a significant threat outside
of a fairly narrow area centred on Iraq? An issue to remember is that
the Saudi Arabians and Kuwaitis and Israelis failed to either launch
pre-emptive strikes or demand US military cover against the threat of
Iraqi WMEs. They're the threatened neighbours... if they aren't shouting
for help, perhaps the threat is being slightly oversold?

(Or maybe there's more Arab pride at play. Or lots of other
possibilities. This is a _large_ question)

It appears that judgment was incorrect, but whatever faults led to the
error appear to have been shared by those nations both for and against
the war in Iraq.

Intelligence is inherently imperfect. My concern is that certainty was
assigned to data that was at best "highest probability". Nations that
acted on that worst-case threat now have to try to pacify Iraq until a
handover: nations that were more cautious about assigning certainty to
intel data are branded "axis of Weasel" even though hindsight shows them
correct. Lose-lose.

Misuse intel, and you'll shape the results you get in the next crisis.

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk