Disputed Iraq Raids Blamed on Bad Intelligence

[Jacobin]

BAGHDAD — Erroneous U.S. raids targeting Sunni Arab political organizations were the result of bad intelligence mistakenly linking the groups to insurgent activity, a senior U.S. military official said Thursday.

Raids on the two Sunni offices last month inflamed sectarian tensions and sullied the U.S. image as the Bush administration and Iraqi officials try to reach out to the disenfranchised Sunni Arab minority, which forms the core of the insurgency.

The raids have also raised questions about the quality of U.S. intelligence in a fast-moving guerrilla war in which U.S. forces are regularly accused of sweeping up innocent Iraqis and acting on questionable or tainted evidence.

U.S. commanders have acknowledged that cultural, language and other barriers have impeded the gathering of accurate intelligence. Commanders must often rely on the word of Iraqis whose motivations are unclear. But U.S. authorities have said recently that the quality of intelligence was improving.


Goooood Morning IraqNam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[teryang]

1. Sullied the "U.S." image?

It isn't the U.S. It's the bush regime. Their image is horrible and beyond repair. The United States of America no longer exists. That was the constitutional government we no longer have.

Intelligence. There is no intelligence. How could there be when the whole reason for going to war was a fraud from the start? Do people think that can be fixed? There is no intelligence.

[fasttense]

2. Bad Intelligence gets the rap for every little mistake.

No weapons of Mass Destruction, just bad intelligence. Inadvertent raids on Sunni Arabs, bad intelligence. Maybe they shouldn't rely on torture for their main source of information.

[elperromagico]

4. In a way, they're right. Bad intelligence is to blame.

It's the kind of bad intelligence that makes people believe a guy like George W. Bush would make a jim-dandy president.

[JNelson6563]

10. *ding*ding*ding*

Maybe they shouldn't rely on torture for their main source of information.

We have a winner!! :toast:

[tanyev]

12. Bush's inability to speak in coherent sentences

blamed on bad intelligence.

[ClintonTyree]

3. Is it bad intelligence?

Or is it the bad decisions they make with that intelligence? I'm more inclined to believe the later since everything this administration has done since day one has turned to shit. When you ignore or bend intelligence to fit your policy, as the bush White House has done all along, you're going to fuck things up, just like the bush White House has done all along.

Didn't our fearless leader say, "I get darned good intelligence"? So what the hell are you DOING with all of that good intelligence? :wtf:

[elperromagico]

5. It's being "edited for content"

by "advisors" who clearly have no ax to grind whatsoever.

[LynnTheDem]

6. Good morning VietRaq!

We gotta get outta this place...

[4dsc]

7. Sound's like Vietnam all over again!!

"U.S. commanders have acknowledged that cultural, language and other barriers have impeded the gathering of accurate intelligence."

[Enraged_Ape]

8. Why don't they just rename the CIA the Central Idiocy Agency?

"Intelligence" gets the blame for every fucking stupid thing the Bush administration does. How can they even still call it "intelligence" with a straight face?

And why do our intelligence agencies continue to take shit from BushCo? They are made to look like incompetent boobs at almost every turn, when it's obvious who the real incompetent boob is.

[acmavm]

9. It wasn't this way in the beginning. The CIA tried to warn these clowns

about a lot of this 'bad intelligence'. It was pushed by little Dougie Feith's organization, the OSP.

Any decent and honest intelligence agents have been forced out now. It's being run by John Negroponte, as corrupt and sadistic a human being as they come.

Why in the hell don't people connect the dots between this administration of liars, thieves, and killers and the criminal acts they committed in Central America. Or even Iran/Contra? I don't understand that at all.

[MaineDem]

13. I wouldn't want to piss off the intelligence community

The Bushies are doing a really good job at it though.

[Supersedeas]

11. erroneous air raids??? Did Major U.S. media outlets print this???

[evermind]

15. Yup, story is from LA Times

though I can't see a link in the top post here. It's at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mistake10jun10,0,1051252.story?coll=la-home-world

Not wanting to labour the obvious, but "Bad intelligence" is a classic plausible deniability strategy. Wasn't that what they said (as well as the case for the Iraq war) about bombing the Chinese embassy somewhere in the Balkans, and hitting Russian diplomats in transit in Iraq?

As I see it, it's at least possible that there's been a strategy of reprisal killings ongoing for some time in Iraq: after US casualties, just bomb a few houses, shoot some people up, to put over the message that attacks on US personnel will result in local tragedies. If you happen to target oppositional political organisations, that could be a bonus. Now that is just speculation on my part - there's (of course) no evidence for it.

[geckosfeet]

14. Bad intelligence ?? Oh yeah,, thats why we are in Iraq.

[damntexdem]

16. 'Bad intelligence'? No, more likely, ...

the complete absence of intelligence.