| Slippery Slope |
16 June 2003
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US Intelligence Worries
It is beginning to look more and more serious for the intelligence communties and their political masters in Washington. Allegations that the intelligence services were pressured into providing the desired answers to the politicos in advance of the war in Iraq are flying fast and furious. If true, a reorganization will scarcely be enough.
An intelligence service, naturally, is needed in any intercommunal relationship, to keep one aware of what potential enemies are thinking and what they are capable of doing. Political leaders can only make sound judgments with solid, accurate and timely information. When the leaders make their decisions and then seek confirmation from the intelligence community for support, the spies are worse than useless -- they are counter-productive.
Political science is a science only to the extent that a certain degree of empiricism can be applied. Policy based on facts fits this bill, facts created to suit policy is fiction, dangerous fiction.
If the Bush administration (and the Blair government, too) did, indeed, press for confirmation of certain facts to bolster their case in favor of war, reorganizing the intelligence services will do no good. In the future, the same politicians will do the exact same thing. What will have to change are the rulers, not the intelligence services.