What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7948

What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?
by Mary Ratcliff | Jun 7 2007

snip//

Like the earlier NIE, these later assessments were not something that the Bush administration had asked for, but something requested by others who knew how risky the situation was. The October 2002 NIE had been requested by Senator Bob Graham, the Democratic head of the Senate Intelligence Committee at that time. These later NIEs were requested by the State Department as they realized the Bush administration really didn't understand how much of a hornets nest they were about to kick.

snip//

These assessments were not something that would have affected the decisions of those in Congress, because by that time, the only Decider left was President Bush and his advisors. But those assessments were quite prescient in the problems that would be faced if Bush went forward with his war of choice.

In contrast, the other two assessments spoke directly to the instability, conflict, and black hole for blood and treasure that over the past four years we have come to know as Iraq. The assessments described the main contours of the mess that was to be, including Iraq’s unpromising and undemocratic political culture, the sharp conflicts and prospect for violence among Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian groups, the Marshall Plan-scale of effort needed for economic reconstruction, the major refugee problem, the hostility that would be directed at any occupying force that did not provide adequate security and public services, and the exploitation of the conflict by Al-Qaeda and other terrorists.

And as Pillar flatly states, invading Iraq was always a bad idea, and not just because the Bush administration made such a hash of the aftermath.

The assessments support the proposition that the expedition in Iraq always was a fool’s errand rather than a good idea spoiled by poor execution, implying that the continued search for a winning strategy is likely to be fruitless. Some support for the poor execution hypothesis can be found in the assessments, such as the observation that Iraq’s regular army could make an important contribution in providing security (thus implicitly questioning in advance the wisdom of ever disbanding the army). But the analysts had no reason to assume poor execution, and their prognosis was dark nonetheless.

Pillar notes that these assessments had very little information that would jeopardize national security, yet it took three years and a change in party control in Congress to get these assessments released. And after four years, the predictions of the Intelligence Community in these suppressed NIEs has been proven largely correct.

You can read the declassified NIEs here (pdf):
http://intelligence.senate.gov/prewar.pdf