Who knew that deposing Saddam and occupying Iraq would lead to violence and encourage extremists?

[bigtree]

apparently the National Intelligence Council knew and produced reports detailing the prospects . . .

2003 intelligence reports predicted violence in Iraq

By Walter Pincus
The Washington Post
May 20, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Two intelligence assessments from January 2003 predicted that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and subsequent U.S. occupation of Iraq could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region, according to congressional sources and former intelligence officials familiar with the prewar studies.

The two assessments, titled "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq" and "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq," were produced by the National Intelligence Council and will be a major part of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's long-awaited Phase II report on prewar intelligence assessments about Iraq. The assessments were delivered to the White House and to congressional intelligence committees before the war started.

The assessment on post-Hussein Iraq included judgments that while Iraq was unlikely to split apart, there was a significant chance that domestic groups would fight each other and that ex-regime military elements could merge with terrorist groups to battle any new government. It even talks of guerrilla warfare, according to congressional sources and former intelligence officials.

The second NIC assessment discussed "political Islam being boosted and the war being exploited by terrorists and extremists elsewhere in the region," one former senior analyst said. It also suggested that fear of U.S. military dominance and occupation of a Middle East country -- one sacred to Islam -- would attract foreign Islamic fighters to the area.

The NIC assessments paint "a very sobering and, as it has turned out, mostly accurate picture of the aftermath of the invasion," according to a former senior intelligence officer familiar with the studies. He sought anonymity because he is not authorized to speak about still-classified assessments.

The former senior official said that after the NIC papers were distributed to senior government officials, he was told by one CIA briefer that a senior Defense Department official had said they were "too negative" and that the papers "did not see the possibilities" the removal of Hussein would present.

In his book, "At the Center of the Storm," former CIA Director George Tenet wrote that the NIC assessments on Iraq said that "Iraqi political culture is so imbued with norms alien to the democratic experience ... that it may resist the most vigorous and prolonged democratic treatments."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-intel_5smay20,1,7634677.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=2&cset=true

[Kagemusha]

1. War defenders have long said Saddam was a grave future threat

and he needed to be taken down because the alternative, the current Iraq, is far better than an Iraq with Saddam Hussein leading it.

And yes, Iraq has far less industrial power and power projection and power of all kinds, including electricity.

[annabanana]

2. Anyone that dares to use the phrase "failed intelligence" on any

of the talk shows should be smacked down hard every time.

Any bobbleheaded "host" that lets that crap go unopposed and unchallenged should be subject to charges of treason.

[mikeytherat]

3. Bush's daddy knew. In 1996, he wrote exactly what would happen:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep" and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Further more, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different -- and perhaps barren -- outcome."

-- George H.W. Bush, A World Transformed (page 489)

mikey_the_rat

[malaise]

4. Anyone who knew the history of the British attempts

to dominate this region knew what would happen. Fugg Bush. He and Blair should be in chains at The Hague.

[lligrd]

5. Me!

Simple, logical deduction derived from historical conclusions. Not to mention the fact that our P* was a loser and the occupation illegal!

[Rydz777]

6. Douglas McArthur warned against fighting a protracted ground

war on the mainland of Asia. He was right, and the same logic extends to the Middle East. Nothing good is going to come out of this war - but searching for a silver lining, I find this one: no President in the foreseeable future will be so stupid as to commit such a folly again.

[Lost4words]

7. Thinking Humans Knew!

They are all traitors IMO, the chicken hawks that is!

8643

[dazzlerazzle]

8. who would have thought

Both Condi Rice and Don Rumsfeld talk about their knowledge of history. Anytime they go in front of cameras someone should ask them if they are knowledgeable students of history, why didn't they know that the occupying of Iraq would lead to what it is today?

[bigtree]

9. "The assessments were delivered to the White House and to congressional intelligence committees

before the war started.

[underseasurveyor]

10. Many of us here @ the DU knew

that is exactly what would happen. Didn't need to be a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

[TahitiNut]

11. Amen. It's sad that a Keen Sense Of The Obvious can't seem to survive in politics or the media.

:shrug:

[mdmc]

12. I knew

ME!