This article originally appears in The American Thinker.
Suppose you were president of a country that had been hit by a massive terrorist attack that had killed 3,000 of your fellow citizens. Suppose you had come to the inescapable conclusion that not only were the terrorists to be destroyed for the threat they posed to the nation you led, but that other nations who supported the terrorists must also be dealt with. And suppose one of those nations in particular, already shooting at your fighters and bombers, was also known to give financial support to terrorists as well as allowing their territory to be used as a training ground for the murderous religious fanatics who threatened the very existence of the nation you have sworn to preserve and protect.
Now suppose that there were large swaths of the national security community unalterably opposed to your policy. Suppose that many of these unelected bureaucrats believed that their judgment was not only superior to yours, the elected leader, but better than those whom you appointed to oversee the agencies in which they worked. Also suppose that many of them were partisans who wished to undermine your decisions in order to swing an election to your opponent.
This scenario might make a good outline for a political potboiler of a novel. Unfortunately, this is the situation the President found himself in during the lead up to the Iraq war, and even more so afterward, as the 2004 election loomed on the horizon and the large stockpiles WMD that most of the world believed were present in Saddam’s Iraq never materialized.
Aided and abetted by friendly and ideologically sympathetic reporters who eagerly published the cherry-picked analyses given them by current and former intelligence analysts, this faction at the CIA tried their best to discredit their political opponent in the White House by undermining the war effort and embarrassing the elected leader of the United States.
If you were the President, how would you fight back? Do you simply acquiesce and bend a knee to these arrogant apostates in the intelligence community who treat you with contempt and disrespect?
Every president has had to deal at one time or another with this amorphous mass of conceited and corrupt intelligence bureaucrats, who spend almost as much time worrying about the bureaucratic pecking order as they do the security of the nation. If you spend any time at all in Washington studying and writing about national security issues, you know exactly what they are all about. Their self-importance is evidenced by the way they bully subordinates and fawn over superiors. They mask their insecurities with an arrogant bravado more appropriate to a bullfighter than a servant of the people.
So the President and his people discovered early on that there was implacable resistance in the CIA to their plans to invade Iraq to affect regime change. They started to mistrust the intelligence analysis coming from that quarter. In what can only be described as a desperation move, the White House set up an entire operation devoted to disseminating Iraq intel to policy makers independent of the CIA. In effect, they made an end run around a bureaucracy using the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and his Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (CTEG).
What CTEG found is exactly what the 9/11 Commission found; that there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda – something the CIA refused to acknowledge, having so much invested in their conclusion that the supposedly secular Sunnis in Iraq wouldn’t sully their hands by dealing with the radical Shi’ites Sunnis in al Qaeda. This analysis was demonstrated to be even more wrongheaded after the fall of Baghdad, when files from the Iraqi intelligence service revealed even more contacts with al Qaeda than had previously been revealed.
Other prewar analysis coming from the CIA seemed to confirm that Saddam in fact had large stockpiles of WMD. George Tenet famously referred to the case for WMD as “a slam dunk.†So is the Administration guilty of hearing what it wanted to hear and seeing what it wanted to see with regard to pre-war Iraqi intelligence, especially as it related to ties to al Qaeda and WMD?
What critics universally fail to point out is that in the wake of 9/11, the United States could not afford to take the chance that Saddam had WMD. This is such a fundamental tenet of American policy in the post 9/11 world that the argument for or against it reveals the great chasm in American politics and policy. The divide is not between Republicans and Democrats, so much as it is between those who live in a 9/10 world and those who live in a 9/12 world.
For those who live in the comfortable pre-9/11 America, Saddam was in a “box†and was no threat to the US. To those who woke up on 9/12 and saw a different world, Saddam was eventually going to outlast the world community and sanctions would be lifted, at which point he would be free to continue to threaten his neighbors in the region, as well as forge closer ties with the terrorist groups who ached to attack America and murder thousands of citizens.
Suppose you were President and faced with that possibility. Your political opponents would have the luxury of second guessing every move you made. But it is you who have the responsibility for the safety and security of the republic. If you had done nothing, you would have been taken to task for weakness, as was your father when he failed to effect regime change during the first Gulf War. But you, the president, not a sidelines critic, could not afford to do nothing. The downside risk of being wrong was too enormous.
Was the President hearing what he wanted to hear with regard to pre-war intelligence? Or, was he hearing the screams of dying Americans in his sleep, killed in a terrorist attack if he did nothing ? It really is too bad that our politics are so polarized today, because that is a debate that, on its merits, the President wins every time. It will be good to keep in mind that balance of risk during the coming confrontation with Iran over their enrichment of uranium in order to build atomic bombs. No one is going to argue that Iran doesn’t have ties to terrorists, or that they aren’t a threat to both our allies in the region and to us, the Great Satan,. If it comes to it, I wonder if the opposition will talk about “twisting†intelligence in the lead up to any military action we take against the radical mullahs who wish to wipe Israel off the map as appetizer and destroy the United States as the main course.
The momentous decision to take the United States to war was made even more difficult by the recalcitrance and disloyalty of a faction at the CIA, who opposed the Administration on ideological, political and/or policy grounds. They were the ones who “twisted†intelligence to try to affect policy by leaking classified information to reporters.
The announcement that leaks surrounding the classified CIA prisons where the worst of the worst terrorists were being interrogated will now be investigated is good news indeed. Perhaps, some of the unelected bureaucrats who have tried to bring down the President and undermine the war effort will themselves be revealed as the petty, arrogant small minded people that they are.
UPDATE
This is what I get for writing at 2:30 in the morning.
Al Qaeda is of course, an organization of Sunni radicals as both Morgan Collins and Gumshoe point out in the comments. No excuse because I knew that Osama is a Saudi and as Gumshoe points out, a devoted Wahhabi.
I regret the error and am grateful that it was pointed out.
8:56 am
amen brother…thank God for our President
9:02 am
An outstanding observation.
10:15 am
Any analysis on Saddam’s WMD will need to focus on what was transferred to Syria prior to the war. There were reports that large truck convoys were transferred to Syria prior to the war. The Iraq Survey Group acknowledges this. According to Charles Duelfer, due to the securtiy situation, they were never able to complete this investigation. Mr. Duelfer has said they would like to complete that investigation. David Kay said these convoys contained “Iraqi equipment” or something to this effect. It was the judgement of the ISG that these did not contain the stockpiles of WMD. This is the conventional wisdom and I hope it is correct. Clearly the WMD is not “there.” At least not where we thought it was. Before we can conclude that Saddam’s Iraq did not contain the stockpiles of WMD that we thought were there, at a minimum, the question as to what was transferred to Syria needs to be resolved. To those who would arrogantly claim that Saddam did not have stockpiles of WMD I would simply say “not so fast. The investigations need to be completed.” Unfortunately, if my hunch is correct, not only did Saddam have the stockpiles of WMD but the stockpiles have gone missing!! Where are they? Answering these questions is not a pro-Bush argument. It is a matter of American national security. Depending upon where the facts lead it could be the best argument against our president that can be made.
10:37 am
I propose a motto for 9/12 world. “$!@# our principles, save our skin.”
10:45 am
Superb posting!
So there were no stockpiles? Who cares??? I don’t have stockpiles of peanuts in my house, but with the money I have I can damned sure get them when I need/want them.
It should never have been a question of what Iraq had, it clearly should have been a question of what Iraq could make/get. And as you point out, the risks of being wrong on that count were, and still are, far too high to sit back and hope for the best.
11:36 am
Pardon me, but the argument you have produced is essentially one for dictatorial power in the executive, and for systematic rejection of any form of institutional knowledge or wisdom. Perhaps you do not see the similarities for your own reasons but these are the qualities that led to disaster in 1930’s Germany, Italy and Japan and other points East and West.
It seems to me that you all are driven by two unfounded fears: one that there is a threat you cannot deal with which requires a scorched earth policy against a class of people, and two that the government itself is untrustworthy and must be specifically neutralized by what ever means available including deception and lying.
This just does not seem to make any kind of sense and leads without fail into conditions from which we cannot extricate ourselves since the simple trust that holds us together is intentionally destroyed.
Norquist, of course, has been making this self-serving argument for years while collecting large fees from foreign governments for access to Republican policy makers.
I cannot help but wonder why you are so willing to forgo your own judgment and trust a man, Bush, who has no experience in the world or in national government.
2:56 pm
Yes, a good post, but in para 8 you referred to the “radical Shi’ites in al Qaeda”. AQ is radical, all right, but Sunni.
4:52 pm
what Morgan Collins just said,Rick.
AQ is Muslim Brotherhood(Egypt)/Wahhabi
(Saudi Arabia) related.
Shi’ism is found primarily
in Southern Iraq and Iran.
OBL’s ideology is mainly Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabi-derived.
5:17 pm
Hezbollah would account for the
Shi’ite bad-guy(terrorist) roster,
run out of Tehran,and busy in parts of
Lebanon and Syria.
11:05 pm
Another winner, Rick.
12:21 am
what do you say to the throngs of former israeli solidiers who have disavowed torture as useless and which provides only bunk intelligence? how many orange terror warnings have we had right up to the election last fall?
lets hope some day some of the solidiers over there fighting your war while you clownies sit on your asses and cheer on the president who is bankrupting this country in so many ways … don’t end up getting the treatment you so easily endorse.
7:03 am
Great posting and well thought out. Super use of deductive reasoning.
One question. What if the leak of information is coming with the help of a Senator with access to highly sensitive information via his or her role on a particular committee?...
As for BBoot-Obviosly NO understanding of LEADERSHIP!
7:28 pm
What worries me, is a dem pres and congress in ‘08. I can just see a bunch of “war is never the answer” tree huggers in charge. Those that live in fantasy land are the ones who will be the downfall of the U.S.
They don’t see that these terrorist groups want to spread Islam across the whole earth and make it one big Caliphate. There is no tolerance in what the terrorists believe, yet, the liberal “give peace a chance” crowd can’t see this, even as obvious as it is. Appeasement does not work. Just ask Neville Chaimberlain.
5:50 am
For the stumbling fools who choose to whine non-stop re:THE ONGOING WAR. It’s ongoing, so shut up!
As a marine Viet Nam Era veteran, I can say that I’ve seen this kind of handiwork before by ignorant and foolish types claiming to have the nations best interests at heart.
If you support US troops and America, as so many born and bred into lip service espouse to, then shut up!! You’re not helping Americans, you’re aiding and abetting the enemy! I know you don’t get it but it’s not your fault. You’re stupid, so you have an excuse. We don’t expect you to get it, due to your condition, shall we say. Let me try to make a point based on my real life circumstance and provide an analogy.
I was working in norhtern Alaska one early spring day. We were taking down the scaffold from beneath a ship loader that we rebuilt. Break up is coming soon and the sea ice is getting thinner. We had been using a snow machine and sled to ferry the scaffold parts to the shoreline all day and at days end I climbed down the fifty plus feet ladder to the ice in order to check my crab pot. Rather than climb back up into the superstructure, I decided to walk across the approximate 200-300’ of ice to shore. As I neared the tracks of where the snow machine had been running all day, I could see blue ice in the track. Now unless your a winged creature, this is cause for concern. I kept moving at an oblique angle away from the tracks and simultaneously removed my spud wrench from my side pocket, while looking over my shoulder at my own tracks. Blue as the sky, they were. With wrench in hand, I began to pitch forward and assume a bear crawl position for the remaining 100’ or so, in order to distribute my weight on all fours. As I did this, the ice gave way and I invented an Olympic event. The human ice rototiller may not catch on in your neighborhoood for obvious reasons, but I never once that I was destined to be crab food. If I played golf, I wouldn’t know how to handicap the weight of several layers of winter gear and water filled boots for this chilling event. I remember looking at the shore line, watching my former friends (note to self-get smarter friends) hopping back and forth with a fifty foot coil of 2” rubber airline, like flies on a gut pile. Even if I was within range, the spring they think they will throw will whip back and smack the throwee and when I get to shore, I’ll have to drive him to the main camp for stitches in a month or so when his face thaws out enough to bleed. I’m damn near laughing at the panic and indecisiveness…sure glad they like me!
The main point is this…if I stop to inspect my tracks…if I don’t have a spud wrench…if I stop and calculate the 12-16 knot current into which gravity draws me down…if I wait for someone else to bla bla bla…If you choose to second guess and waste time, people and money airing any criticisms good or bad, blue ice has a name and place for you. And on your way to become crab food, reality will have a new meaning for those of you who choose nothing.
We must keep moving or fail! Semper Fi and God Bless you President Bush, good people in every nation and especially all loyal Americans past,present and future.