{"id":1013,"date":"2004-07-13T07:49:13","date_gmt":"2004-07-13T11:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/07\/intelligence_failure\/"},"modified":"2004-07-13T07:49:13","modified_gmt":"2004-07-13T11:49:13","slug":"intelligence_failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/07\/intelligence_failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Intelligence Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Bush
\nJuly 14, 2003<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence. And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As it turns out, Ann Richards’ assessment<\/a> is more accurate:<\/p>\n

[F]ormer Texas governor Ann Richards got things going early. She joked that with “one if by land” and “two if by sea,” Paul Revere & Co. had better information about the impending war with the Brits than the current administration did before going into Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, after<\/i> the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence releases a blistering report<\/a>, Bush sings a different tune<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I look forward to working with members of Congress to put out reforms that will work. A couple of ideas that I think make sense: One, we need to bolster human intelligence. In other words, one of the best ways to figure out what the enemy is thinking is to get to know the enemy firsthand, I guess is the best way to put it — is to have as much human intelligence as possible. Good quality intelligence and enough human intelligence agents, assets out there so that we can cover the globe.
\nSecondly, one of the key ingredients is to use our technologies to listen and look better. And so we’ve got to always make sure our intelligence agencies are on the cutting edge of change. And thirdly, there are quite a few intelligence-gathering agencies within Washington, and there needs to be better coordination between the agencies. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We are only now learning how questionable and unreliable some of the sources for the pre-war WMD claims were. But didn’t Bush, at the time he was talking of mushroom clouds, have an opportunity to press the CIA and the Pentagon’s own special intelligence outfit on the reliability of the sources? He could have said: “Going to war is such a momentous decision. I want to make absolutely sure that the sources for these are rock solid.”
\nKnowing what we know about Bush’s intellectual curiosity, and his desire to go after Iraq dating back to the start of his administration, do you believe he viewed the “darn good” intelligence with an adequate degree of skepticism?
\nI don’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Bush July 14, 2003: I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence. And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence. As it turns out, Ann Richards’ assessment is more accurate: [F]ormer Texas governor Ann Richards got things going early. She joked that with “one if by land” and “two […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}