In a move sure to raise even more questions about the decision to go to war with Iraq, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will on Friday release selected portions of pre-war intelligence in which the CIA warned the administration of the risk and consequences of a conflict in the Middle East.
Among other things, the 40-page Senate report reveals that two intelligence assessments before the war accurately predicted that toppling Saddam could lead to a dangerous period of internal violence and provide a boost to terrorists. But those warnings were seemingly ignored.
In January 2003, two months before the invasion, the intelligence community’s think tank — the National Intelligence Council — issued an assessment warning that after Saddam was toppled, there was “a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other and that rogue Saddam loyalists would wage guerilla warfare either by themselves or in alliance with terrorists.”
It also warned that “many angry young recruits” would fuel the rank of Islamic extremists and “Iraqi political culture is so embued with mores (opposed) to the democratic experience … that it may resist the most rigorous and prolonged democratic tutorials.”
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It is likely that Democrats and Republicans on the Hill will question how the administration could have predicted a short, easy war given these warnings and why it has taken more four years for them to surface.
There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy.
On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney’s team and acolytes — who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy…
The thinking on Cheney’s team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran’s nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).
This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf — which just became significantly larger — as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.
I’ll wait and see how Tester and Stabenow vote on the cave-in Iraq supplemental funding bill before criticizing them. But I’d like Reid to stop pretending he’s trying to stop the war right now. And I’d especially like him to stop pretending the bill he’s backing is some kind of victory for Democrats. Americans have already “spoken out” on the war. They oppose it. They elected Democrats to end it. Now the Associated Press reports Reid’s boast that the compromise legislation would be the first war-funding bill sent to Bush since the U.S. invasion of Iraq “where he won’t get a blank check.” The president is absolutely getting a blank check, Harry, and Democrats should be honest about it. As proposed, the benchmarks are toothless; they have no consequences, and Republicans are making sure Bush can waive them and continue spending when — note that I didn’t say “if” — Nouri al-Maliki’s government fails to meet them.
Sadly relevant cartoon from 2002 here. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose …
The UK arm of McDonald’s is petitioning the Oxford English Dictionary to falsify the definition of the term “McJob”, the BBC reports:
Fast-food giant McDonald’s has launched a petition to get the dictionary definition of a McJob changed.
The Oxford English Dictionary currently describes a McJob as “an unstimulating low-paid job with few prospects”. [BBC]
Note that McDonald’s isn’t disputing the accuracy of the OED’s definition of the term “Mcjob” as used by English speakers today. Instead McDonald’s is demanding that the dictionary fabricate a definition for the word because they don’t like the pejorative connotations it has in reality:
“The current definition is extremely insulting to the 67,000 people who work for us within the UK,” said McDonald’s senior vice president David Fairhurst.
“It is also insulting for everyone else who works in the wider restaurant and tourism sectors. [BBC]
Yes, there are other insulting words in the dictionary like “revisionist,” “Orwellian,” and “bully.” Maybe we should redefine those terms so that McDonald’s executives don’t feel insulted when they look them up.
Regular correspondent Haans P. has taken the plunge into the blog world, here. And my good friend Jim Bunte is launching new online magazine for toy collectors, here.
Also, John McCrea and CAKE are putting out a CD without the help of a record label. There’s been a lot of talk online lately about the changes the music industry is going through — I think a good way to support independent musicians is to buy their stuff.
The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.
The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.
Fantastic.
AND: Don’t read the comments on the ABC website if you tend to get depressed about the human condition.
…the larger change is that the very process Gore describes — of propaganda taken as fact, of slogans taken as arguments, of repetition substituting for logic and, yes, of lies and half-truths taken as truth — is now well-recognized. What worked against Gore during the recount and what worked for the administration in the run-up to the Iraq war doesn’t work anymore. That is an advance for democracy and for reason.
That is an extraordinarily sunny assessment, to put it mildly. I myself am more of a cynic, and will bet E.J. Dionne a moderately priced dinner in a relatively pleasant restaraunt that there will be an effective instance of lies and half-truths taken as truth before the summer is finished. I’ll even handicap him the current examples of propaganda taken as fact and slogans taken as arguments.
You’ve probably already seen the Salt Lake City Tribune article about the alleged MySpace page of Laura Schlessinger’s son Deryk, a paratrooper in Afghanistan:
The MySpace page, publicly available until Friday when it disappeared from the Internet, included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned “My Sweet Little Habib”; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.
I only find that mildly interesting. But what I find extremely compelling is the Army’s suggestion that this actually is the creation of Osama bin Laden:
Army spokesman Robert Tallman [said] “it may be possible that our enemies are actually behind this.
“Our enemies are adaptive, technologically sophisticated, and truly understand the importance of the information battlespace,” Tallman continued. “Sadly, they will use that space to promulgate and disseminate untrue propaganda.”
I think I speak for everyone when I say that, if Al Qaeda’s propaganda arm has the time and sophistication to create a fake-but-believable MySpace page for Laura Schlessinger’s son, we’re going to lose this thing. I suggest that we surrender immediately, and I for one welcome our new salafist overlords.
Apparently Ron Paul has ripped a hole in the fabric of reality, and we’ve fallen through into another dimension in which U.S. foreign policy is debated on national daytime television.
Pretty amazing. I like this universe much more than the old one.
