Losing the Plot

Some of the progressive press, as well as the mainstream media, are getting distracted by the “WMD Intelligence Failure” red herring.

It’s always amusing to see the words “intelligence failure” and George W. Bush in the same sentence. It’s also gratifying that most people recognize Bush’s support for an investigative commission as a transparent attempt to hijack the process and string it out until after the Nov. 2 elections.

The battle of perceptions is shaping up between the mainstream handwringing over “failed processes” i.e. CIA takes the fall vs. progressives’ “failed leadership” i.e. Condi and by extension Georgy Boy get a slap on the wrist for cherrypicking ambiguous, heavily caveated spook dope.

Wrong war. Wrong strategy.

I’m talking about the progressives here, not GWB.

The issue is not whether the CIA gave the White House garbage intelligence, or whether the White House concocted its own garbage intelligence.

The quality of intelligence was irrelevant to the Bush administration’s rush to war.

The defining fact of our Iraq adventure is what I called “George W. Bush’s imperial impatience” to begin his war.

He was desperate to go to war in March. He couldn’t wait to build a consensus within the United Nations, he couldn’t wait to build a broad-based coalition…

…and he couldn’t wait for detailed intelligence from a dedicated, highly trained team of spies that had penetrated deep into the heart of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq…

…the UN inspectors.

That’s what makes the insider angst about our inadequate “humint” so ludicrous.

We had spies up the yazoo in Iraq. They operated openly without fear of exposure or detention. They could walk into any (as yet unbombed and unlooted) building in Iraq and examine documents and physical evidence to their hearts’ content. They could interrogate anybody they wanted. They had helicopters. They had satellite support. They could order U-2 flights.

There was plenty of high-quality intelligence available. And more of it could have been obtained — but at the cost of undermining the case for war, not strengthening it.

The only way that Bush could invade Iraq was to get the UN inspectors — and their embarrassing evidence and inconvenient conclusions — out of the way.

And now it’s time for the Bush administration to get rid of the UN inspectors one more time — from the collective memory of the press and the American people.

Which probably accounts for Bush’s jaw dropper “We went to war because Saddam wouldn’t let the inspectors in”, first trotted out in front of Kofi Annan, of all people, in July, and most recently on January 27 during a press conference with Poland’s President Knasniewski.

(For those of us whose memories need refreshing, Bush issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein on March 17, 2003 and Annan ordered UNMOVIC and IAEA inspectors to leave Iraq; they departed on March 18; and the invasion officially began on March 19, 2003. See the Arms Control Association Iraq Factsheet.)

Yes, Bush’s disregard for the facts is outrageous. The idea that his grasp of reality might be so tenuous that he actually believes this is true is disturbing.

But the fact that the press let it sink virtually without a trace is terrifying (see Joe Conason Mr. Bush’s Fantasy Planet, Salon Jan. 27, 2004).

The WMD snafu is not a “intelligence failure”. It is merely the afterbirth of a “conspiracy achievement”, a plot by which manipulated intelligence was used by a pro-war cabal to hijack the US government and military and invade a sovereign state for private motives and under false pretenses.

The fact that no WMDs were found is simply testimony to the skill, determination, and cynicism of the plotters, who were able to concoct a $200 billion war out of absolutely nothing.

We should not be distracted by the “intelligence failure” chaff the Bush administration is throwing out.

The true focus of any investigation into the Iraq debacle should be the decision-making processes within the White House that dragged us into war — including the decision to pre-empt the work of the UN inspectors…

…who have now been proven correct in every regard.

In other words, the intelligence was fine, authoritative, and readily available. Ordinary Americans could access it simply by picking up a newspaper or clicking on the UN website.

What the CIA was doing simply doesn’t matter. And “fixing” the CIA so that it can somehow report with absolute accuracy the capabilities and intentions of states that the president has already decided to destroy anyway will not provide an effective check on a criminally careless and reckless chief executive.

I don’t want to see George Tenet testifying on the Hill.

I want Hans Blix.

And I want a commission to investigate and report — before election day — whether Bush’s mis-statements to Congress in his March 19 Determination that established the legal basis for the invasion of Iraq amount to impeachable offensives. (see How to Impeach George Bush, June 15, 2003)

If the American people allow themselves to be satisfied with a misdirected investigation into CIA data crunching that yields little more than a Huttonized pro-establishment whitewash and some post-election personal embarrassment for George W. Bush, then the intelligence failure isn’t the CIA’s or George W. Bush’s…

It’s ours.