Rock Bottom

12 July 2004



Senate Intelligence Committee Report Slams CIA

In its report on the intelligence community's action leading up to the war against Iraq, the Senate Intelligence Committee essentially said that America's information gathering and analyzing was miserable. It more or less exonerated the Bush administration from charges of pressuring the spooks, but that is hardly a good result for America. US foreign policy has been crippled for a generation by the findings.

That is not to say that the committee should have whitewashed things (although some say it went too easy on the White House). This has been brewing a long time, ever since the American left decided some time in the 1970s that spycraft was a field of moral certainty and boy scout rectitude. Since then, Congress has gutted the CIA, and intelligence in general, and has placed burdens on its operating methods that have resulted in a corporate culture more concerned with its perks than its job.

Those who hoped to find some way to blame a war-mongering White House for the push to war were left having to argue against Conclusion 84 in the report, which reads, "The Committee found no evidence that the Vice President's visits to the Central Intelligence Agency were attempts to pressure analysts, were perceived as intended to pressure analysts by those who participated in the briefings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, or did pressure analysts to change their assessments." To continue this line of complaint is to call the committee a pack of liars.

It is regrettable that the administration was not faulted in the report. Not because it should have been (that is a different argument), but rather because that would provide a quick fix in November with the election of a competent president. But the report essentially said that no budget changes or personnel alterations would fix things -- the entire intelligence gathering process will have to be rebuilt. That will take years.

And while that is going on, American credibility in foreign affairs will plummet. Anything that an American president says or does based on US intelligence will be doubted by friend as well as foe. In the war on terror, this is a heavy blow indeed.

The White House didn't get off scot-free, however. Conclusion 99 says, "Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysts determine the Iraqi regime's possible links to al-Qaida." The Vice President needs to get this through his head and quit pretending he knows something the rest of the country does not.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


Home

Google
WWW Kensington Review



Search:
Keywords: