Behold! The obvious about Iraq is revealed!

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Come forth, commission report! And share with us what we already figured out for ourselves, as well as a few gems.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7331220/

 

Bush panel rips U.S. intelligence abilities

'Dead wrong' on Iraq; little known about Iran, North Korea

BREAKING NEWS

NBC News and news services

Updated: 8:47 a.m. ET March 31, 2005

 

WASHINGTON - In a scathing report released Thursday, President Bush’s commission on weapons of mass destruction found that America’s spy agencies were “dead wrong” in most of their judgments about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

 

The commission was also highly critical of U.S. abilities to assess what existing adversaries have, stating that the United States knows “disturbingly little” about their weapons programs.

 

On Saddam, the commission stated that “we conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure.”

 

The main cause, the commission said, was the intelligence community’s “inability to collect good information about Iraq’s WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions rather than good evidence.

 

“On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude,” the report said.

 

But the commission also said that it found no indication that spy agencies distorted the evidence they had concerning Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, a charge raised against the administration during last year’s presidential campaign.

 

“The analysts who worked Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments,” the report said.

 

But it added: “It is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom.”

 

Unanimous advice: Strengthen intel chief

The commission called for dramatic change to prevent future failures. It outlined more than 70 recommendations, saying that President Bush must give John Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence, broader powers for overseeing the nation’s 15 spy agencies.

 

“It won’t be easy to provide this leadership to the intelligence components of the Defense Department or to the CIA,” the commissioners said. “They are some of the government’s most headstrong agencies. Sooner or later, they will try to run around — or over — the DNI. Then, only your determined backing will convince them that we cannot return to the old ways,” the commission told Bush.

 

The panel, which was unanimous in its report and advice, also recommended that Bush demand more of the intelligence community, which has been repeatedly criticized for failures as various investigations have looked back on the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

 

“The intelligence community needs to be pushed,” the report said. “It will not do its best unless it is pressed by policymakers — sometimes to the point of discomfort.”

 

It said analysts must be pushed to explain what they don’t know and that agencies must be pressed to explain why they don’t have better information on key subjects. At the same time, the report said the administration must be more careful about accepting the judgment of intelligence agencies.

 

“No important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that forces the (intelligence) community to explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what alternatives might also be true,” the report said.

 

The commission also called for sweeping changes at the FBI to combine the bureau’s counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a new office.

 

Problems with 'Curve Ball'

The proposals were prompted in part by an Iraqi defector code-named “Curve Ball” who may have had a drinking problem and who provided suspect information on Saddam’s purported mobile weapons labs, officials said. The defector and the questions about his veracity have been described in recent government reports.

 

The information the defector provided was included in the much-maligned October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a high-level collection of intelligence that the White House used to argue for invading Iraq. That document said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, but no such weapons have been found.

 

The commission's report will single out that document, which said there was “compelling evidence” that Iraq sought uranium for nuclear weapons.

 

The document included dissent in the form of cautionary footnotes from the State Department’s intelligence bureau, the Energy Department and the Air Force.

 

But a senior administration official acknowledged in July 2003 that Bush and then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice did not read footnotes in the 90-page document.

 

By glossing over or omitting dissenting views about Iraq’s weapons programs, the estimate overstated the accuracy of U.S. intelligence, according to an official who described the commission’s report.

 

“There’s a need for more complete reporting,” the official said.

 

The estimate was also the basis for then Secretary of State Colin Powell going to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 to lobby for military action.

 

Powell this week told the German magazine Stern that he was “furious and angry” that he had been misinformed about Iraq’s capabilities.

 

“It was information from our security services and from some Europeans, including Germans. Some of this information was wrong. I did not know this at the time,” he said. “Hundreds of millions followed it on television. I will always be the one who presented it. I have to live with that.”

 

600-page report

The commission released its final report, spanning more than 600 pages, after more than a year of work that included closed-door sessions with Bush and other top administration officials.

 

Numerous government reports have detailed intelligence failures since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. This commission is the first formed by Bush to look at why U.S. spy agencies mistakenly concluded that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, one of the administration’s main justifications for invading in March 2003.

 

The panel also considered a range of intelligence issues beyond Iraq, including congressional oversight, satellite imagery and electronic snooping. Among numerous soft spots, officials familiar with the findings say “human intelligence” — the work of actual operatives on the ground — is lacking.

 

Some of the recommendations

Among other things, the report:

 

    * Recommends forming a new intelligence center to focus on weapons proliferation.

    * Chastises intelligence agencies for their continued failure to share information, despite numerous reforms aimed at improving coordination.

    * Stresses the need for ongoing training for analysts and operatives and new procedures for considering dissenting intelligence analysis.

    * Calls on intelligence agencies to take concrete steps to ensure information from their sources is valid — a move prompted in part by 'Curve Ball'.

    * Proposes updating the FBI’s computers and creating a new national security division within the Justice Department.

 

Bush formed the commission — led by Republican Laurence Silberman, a retired federal appeals court judge, and Democrat Charles Robb, a former senator from Virginia — as it became clear that U.S. weapons inspectors were not going to find stockpiles of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

 

Top intelligence officials were already taking steps to soften the impact of the criticism. The head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes satellite imagery, told employees in an e-mail that they should “take on the lessons learned, and drive on.”

 

“You may find the report difficult to read and you may not agree with the commission’s analysis, opinions, or recommendations,” retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper wrote. “I understand that it’s much more difficult to be criticized rather than praised in public.”

 

I love that bit about "take on the lessons learned, and drive on." It quite closely implies "nod your head and change nothing."

[Guest MikeSC]

Or, more precisely, it means intel is based on other people telling us crap and since EVERYBODY thought the exact same thing, it's not like we had a wealth of contrary voices.

-=Mike

[SuperJerk 0]

I hate to admit it, but Mike's got a point.

[NoCalMike 0]

Wait, so Hans Blix wasn't lying when he said the inspectors weren't finding any weapons, and that we didn't need to go to war? OOPS.

[Guest MikeSC]

Wait, so Hans Blix wasn't lying when he said the inspectors weren't finding any weapons, and that we didn't need to go to war? OOPS.

Except he didn't say that until AFTER the fact. WHILE he was there, he was saying he needed more time.

 

And the guy was an inept dullard who I wouldn't believe.

-=Mike

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Blix loses credibility on the case when he had a habit of announcing well in advance where he'd be going.

[Guest MikeSC]

Blix loses credibility on the case when he had a habit of announcing well in advance where he'd be going.

He wanted to give them time to clean up the WMD.

 

I'm just wondering how Saddam had no WMD when they ALSO report stories like this:

 

http://forums.thesmartmarks.com/index.php?showtopic=68161

-=Mike

[SuperJerk 0]

Saddam at least WANTED people to think he had WMDs.

[Guest MikeSC]

Saddam at least WANTED people to think he had WMDs.

I think Saddam thought he DID have them. I believe that his scientists told him they had them or were at least close out of fear of him torturing them for failing to procure them.

-=Mike

[NoCalMike 0]

Saddam at least WANTED people to think he had WMDs.

I think he wanted the rest of the Middle East to believe he had them, to thwart any attempted invasions, however the minute it looked like America was thinking about going to war, it seemed pretty evident that he didn't actually have them.

[LessonInMachismo 0]

Saddam had stockpiles of weapons that were banned by the sanctions after The Gulf War, but were sold to Iraq nonetheless all throughout the 90's by our supposed allies: Russia, Germany, France to name a few. The "insurgents" are using mortars and rocket launchers of French make that were sold years after the sanctions were put in place. Really bizarre how the Triumvirate of Treachery didn't want to go into Iraq, isn't it?

 

Christmas cards exchanged between Russia and Iraq's top Intell guys were found in the rubble of bombed buildings.

 

I saw on TV for myself when they were wheeling out missiles that were capable of reaching a range far past that which Iraq was allowed...perhaps enough to hit our ally Israel.

 

Democracy is spreading like wildfire in the region. Saddam's evil sons were killed in a most sensational manner.

 

So, to me, not finding WMD's isn't even an issue. No, it was not the sole stated reason for invading Iraq. Check statements and speeches from January and February.

[Justice 0]

Saddam at least WANTED people to think he had WMDs.

I think he wanted the rest of the Middle East to believe he had them, to thwart any attempted invasions, however the minute it looked like America was thinking about going to war, it seemed pretty evident that he didn't actually have them.

He was still a threat to the enter stability of the Middle East, whether it or not he had them.

 

A man committing with a bank robbery with a convincing replica is committing robbery just the same as a man with a real gun. There's no point in second guessing with information we didn't have previously.

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

Saddam at least WANTED people to think he had WMDs.

I think he wanted the rest of the Middle East to believe he had them, to thwart any attempted invasions, however the minute it looked like America was thinking about going to war, it seemed pretty evident that he didn't actually have them.

He was still a threat to the enter stability of the Middle East, whether it or not he had them.

 

A man committing with a bank robbery with a convincing replica is committing robbery just the same as a man with a real gun. There's no point in second guessing with information we didn't have previously.

It's just too bad nobody will be held accountable for fucking up the intel as bad as they did. Alas...

[Guest MikeSC]

Well, except for George Tenet being fired and Porter Goss cleaning house in the CIA.

 

Except for that, yeah, no changes are being made.

-=Mike

[NoCalMike 0]

Well, except for George Tenet being fired and Porter Goss cleaning house in the CIA.

 

Except for that, yeah, no changes are being made.

-=Mike

Yet Wolfowitz goes unscathed, a promotion even?

[Guest MikeSC]

Well, except for George Tenet being fired and Porter Goss cleaning house in the CIA.

 

Except for that, yeah, no changes are being made. 

    -=Mike

Yet Wolfowitz goes unscathed, a promotion even?

And Wolfowitz did what wrong, exactly?

-=Mike

...And the Wolfowitz nomination was friggin' brilliant of Bush. Absolutely brilliant...

[NoCalMike 0]

Well, except for George Tenet being fired and Porter Goss cleaning house in the CIA.

 

Except for that, yeah, no changes are being made. 

     -=Mike

Yet Wolfowitz goes unscathed, a promotion even?

And Wolfowitz did what wrong, exactly?

-=Mike

...And the Wolfowitz nomination was friggin' brilliant of Bush. Absolutely brilliant...

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news4/lind-...ic-success.html

 

Catastrophic success

The problem with Paul Wolfowitz isn't that he's an evil genius -- it's that he has been consistently wrong about foreign policy for 30 years.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By Michael Lind

 

March 17, 2005 | The nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to be president of the World Bank, following his commission of a long and costly series of blunders as deputy secretary of defense in George W. Bush's first term, comes as no surprise to those familiar with his career. Wolfowitz is the Mr. Magoo of American foreign policy. Like the myopic cartoon character, Wolfowitz stumbles onward blindly and serenely, leaving wreckage and confusion behind.

 

Critics are wrong to portray Wolfowitz as a malevolent genius. In fact, he's friendly, soft-spoken, well meaning and thoughtful. He would be the model of a scholar and a statesman but for one fact: He is completely inept. His three-decade career in U.S. foreign policy can be summed up by the term that President Bush coined to describe the war in Iraq that Wolfowitz promoted and helped to oversee: a "catastrophic success."

 

Even the greatest statesman makes some mistakes. But Wolfowitz is perfectly incompetent. He is the Mozart of ineptitude, the Einstein of incapacity. To be sure, he has his virtues, the foremost of which is consistency. He has been consistently wrong about foreign policy for 30 years.

 

In the 1970s and 1980s, as a member of the Committee on the Present Danger and "Team B," Wolfowitz and his allies, such as Richard Perle, argued that the decrepit Soviet Union was vastly more powerful than the CIA claimed it was. After the Soviet Union dissolved, it turned out that the CIA had exaggerated Soviet strength.

 

More than anyone else, Wolfowitz is associated with the neoconservative fantasy of a planetary Pax Americana. This strategy, originally called "reassurance," first surfaced in leaked Pentagon planning documents in 1992, in which Wolfowitz, working for then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, had a hand. The rest of the world reacted with outrage to the implication that Europe and Asia should remain permanent American protectorates. Embarrassed, the first president Bush and Secretary of State James Baker hastily disavowed this strategy.

 

Unfortunately, no bad idea ever dies. Wolfowitz spent the Clinton years, while he was the dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced Strategic Studies, at the center of a network of neoconservative policy intellectuals, political appointees and mouthpieces like William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer devoted to maintaining U.S. hegemony in a "unipolar world." The influence of Wolfowitz and his fellow neoconservatives is clear in President Bush's 2002 National Security Strategy, which calls for the United States to dissuade "potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in the hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States." Note the language. Not "surpassing, or equaling, the power" of a coalition of states, like the alliances in which America took part in the world wars and the Cold War. No, the United States had to adopt as its motto the explanation of the single Texas Ranger dispatched to quell a mob: "One riot, one Ranger."

 

Inadvertently proving that talent always skips a generation, Wolfowitz and his neoconservative allies persuaded Bush to pursue two policies his wiser father had rejected as imprudent: a bid for unilateral world domination and going all the way to Baghdad. By adopting the unilateral hegemony strategy that Wolfowitz favored, the younger Bush alienated most of America's traditional allies and gave credibility to anti-Americans everywhere. By going to Baghdad, as Wolfowitz wanted, the younger Bush exposed the limits of U.S. military power to America's enemies and the world as a whole. That not inconsiderable asset, the mystique of American power, is a casualty of the Iraq war.

 

At least Wolfowitz and his neoconservative allies have been consistent. Since the Cold War ended, they have exaggerated American power in the same way that they exaggerated Soviet power during the Cold War. As if to prove the old adage that people come to resemble their enemies, these former cold warriors treat the United States as a twin of the Soviet Union -- a military empire contemptuous of international law, with satellites instead of allies, justifying wars in its spheres of influence by appeals to ideology ("democracy" rather than "socialism"). In the form of the concentration camps for detainees in Cuba, Iraq and elsewhere run by Donald Rumsfeld's and Wolfowitz's Pentagon, the neoconservatives even provided the United States with a gulag of its own.

 

Wrong about geopolitics in general, Wolfowitz has been wrong about Iraq in particular. Unembarrassed by their ridiculous overestimation of Soviet strength, Wolfowitz and other veterans of the Committee for the Present Danger in the late 1990s took part in the Project for the New American Century. They proceeded to exaggerate the alleged threat to the U.S. from the bankrupt statelet left in Saddam Hussein's hands after the Gulf War even more shamelessly than they had hyped the Soviet menace. Focusing on Saddam and regional threats to Israel, Wolfowitz and the other strategic geniuses of the PNAC circle never mentioned Osama bin Laden.

 

With myopia worthy of Mr. Magoo, Wolfowitz focused on Saddam, not bin Laden, as the major terrorist threat to the United States. According to Laurie Mylroie, the crackpot conspiracy theorist at the American Enterprise Insititute who continues to insist on a Saddam-bin Laden connection, Wolfowitz "provided crucial support" for her book "Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America," published in 2000. The following year, shortly after 9/11, according to Bob Woodward, Wolfowitz told a Cabinet meeting that there was a 10 to 50 percent chance that Saddam was involved. According to former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, describing another occasion, "I could not believe it, but Wolfowitz was spouting the Laurie Mylroie theory that Iraq was behind the 1993 truck bomb at the World Trade Center, a theory that had been ... found to be totally untrue." As late as October 2002, Wolfowitz spoke of the Saddam regime's "training of al Qaeda members in bomb-making, poisons and deadly gasses." This had no basis in reality.

 

Weapons of mass destruction? Wolfowitz claimed: "Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." Was Kansas in danger of being nuked by robot drones from Baghdad? Since the war ended, the Bush administration reluctantly has admitted that prewar skeptics were correct to argue that neither the weapons of mass destruction nor the robot planes capable of "targeting the United States" ever existed.

 

It is unclear whether Wolfowitz actually believed what he said in public on this subject. As he told Sam Tanenhaus in a now-famous Vanity Fair interview, "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy itself, we settled on the one issue that everyone would agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but -- Hold on for one second." (At this point in the official Pentagon transcript a handler intervenes, evidently afraid that Wolfowitz has spilled one bean too many.)

 

In military matters, this deputy secretary of defense displayed a level of ignorance without precedent in the history of civilian appointees to the Pentagon. (Even Robert McNamara's much-maligned "whiz kids" got some things right.) During the Clinton years Wolfowitz peddled the fantasy that American-supported rebels in Iraq could set up a base camp in one region and proceed to depose Saddam with minimal U.S. involvement. With the Bay of Pigs fiasco in mind, Gen. Anthony Zinni described this as the "Bay of Goats" strategy. When Gen. Eric Shinseki predicted that Iraq could not be pacified without hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, Wolfowitz told Congress that Shinseki was "wildly off the mark."

 

"To assume we're going to have to pay for it all is just wrong," Wolfowitz declared, alluding to Iraqi oil revenues that could defray the costs of occupation and reconstruction. It is now clear that the hundreds of billions of dollars the United States will spend in Iraq will come from the pockets of American taxpayers.

 

No summary of Wolfowitz's catastrophically successful career would be complete without acknowledgment that he was one of the major American sponsors of the disgraced Ahmed Chalabi, whom Paul Bremer's administration in Baghdad accused of involvement in Iranian espionage. Last but not least, following Wolfowitz's diplomatic mission to Turkey to obtain support for the forthcoming U.S. invasion of Iraq, Turkey decided to have nothing to do with the war.

 

Diplomat, military tactician, grand strategist -- as I said, Paul Wolfowitz is perfectly incompetent.

 

We live in a country in which privates are punished for the crimes of generals, so it is only natural that Wolfowitz should be rewarded for the blunders, errors and miscalculations that have cost the American and Iraqi people so much by promotion to the World Bank. That's the way it is with Mr. Magoo. Whenever he steps blindly out of a building he has accidentally set on fire, a truck is always conveniently passing by.

 

*That about sums it up*

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

Brilliant... Absolutely brilliant.

[Vern Gagne 0]

You do realize no one read that article.

[2GOLD 0]

I know I didn't when I saw who wrote it.

For once, the length had nothing to do with it.

[Guest MikeSC]

You do realize no one read that article.

Indeed. At least the long articles I post are moderately interesting.

-=Mike

[NoCalMike 0]

You do realize no one read that article.

Indeed. At least the long articles I post are moderately interesting.

-=Mike

I never made the claim that an article pointing out Wolfowitz's clear incompetence, would be interesting.

[Guest MikeSC]

You do realize no one read that article.

Indeed. At least the long articles I post are moderately interesting.

-=Mike

I never made the claim that an article pointing out Wolfowitz's clear incompetence, would be interesting.

Wow, an article that claims he exaggerated about Soviet strength, written by somebody who likely would have been discussing how they could NEVER really be defeated.

 

Yeah, I take it seriously.

-=Mike

[NoCalMike 0]

The quote I bolded was legit, and everyone knows it, it only gets played daily on the radio. That all by itself should have him thrown out on his arse.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

an article that claims he exaggerated about Soviet strength, written by somebody who likely would have been discussing how they could NEVER really be defeated.

That's a hypothetical at best and a straw-man at worst. Tear apart an article for what it says, Mike, not what someone maybe said by chance twenty years ago.

 

Just a few more decades before that, doctors would have told you that smoking isn't going to kill you. Does that mean that you don't listen to doctors today?

[Guest MikeSC]

an article that claims he exaggerated about Soviet strength, written by somebody who likely would have been discussing how they could NEVER really be defeated.

That's a hypothetical at best and a straw-man at worst. Tear apart an article for what it says, Mike, not what someone maybe said by chance twenty years ago.

 

Just a few more decades before that, doctors would have told you that smoking isn't going to kill you. Does that mean that you don't listen to doctors today?

Anybody who rails about "Neoconservatives" already has one strike against them.

-=Mike

[SuperJerk 0]

This version of the article includes really vague quotes from some pretty important people.

 

Report: Iraq intelligence 'dead wrong'

Bush says fundamental changes needed in spy agencies

 

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a scathing report on the intelligence community, a presidential commission Thursday said the United States still knows "disturbingly little" about the weapons programs and intentions of many of its "most dangerous adversaries."

 

The panel also determined the intelligence community was "dead wrong" in its assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities before the U.S. invasion.

 

"This was a major intelligence failure," said a letter from the commission to President Bush.

 

The panel -- called the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction -- formally presented its report to Bush on Thursday morning.

 

Bush praised the commission for presenting an "unvarnished look at our intelligence community."

 

He said the report's recommendations were "thoughtful and extremely significant," adding that the "central conclusion is one that I share -- America's intelligence community needs fundamental change to successfully confront the threats of the 21st century."

 

The commission lists numerous intelligence shortcomings and makes more than 70 recommendations in the almost 600-page report.

 

The report calls for a complete transformation of the intelligence community, which it described as "fragmented, loosely managed and poorly coordinated."

 

"The 15 intelligence organizations are a 'community' in name only and rarely act with a unity of purpose," the panel said in its overview of the report.

 

The report also expressed misgivings about U.S. intelligence on Iran, North Korea, China and Russia, but it said most of those findings were classified.

 

"We can say here that we found that we have only limited access to critical information about several of these high-priority intelligence targets," the report said.

 

The panel said it believes the intelligence community still knows little about the nuclear programs of many adversaries. It noted that in some cases, the community knows less than it did five or seven years ago.

 

The commission did cite some recent success stories, such as dismantling Libya's nuclear program and penetrating Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan's nuclear proliferation network.

'Serious errors'

 

After the intelligence failures in Iraq, Bush appointed the nine-member commission led by Laurence Silberman, a senior federal appellate court judge and a Republican who was in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and former Sen. and Virginia Gov. Chuck Robb, a Democrat.

 

An October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate warned that Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction, had reconstituted its nuclear weapon program and had biological and chemical weapons.

 

The Bush administration used those conclusions as part of its argument for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

 

But the Iraq Survey Group -- set up to look for weapons of mass destruction or evidence of them in the country -- issued a final report saying it saw no weapons or no evidence that Iraq was trying to reconstitute them.

 

The commission's report said the principal cause of the intelligence failures was the intelligence community's "inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions rather than good evidence."

 

The report said analysts were "too wedded" to assumptions about Saddam Hussein's intentions.

 

"The single most prominent recurring theme" of its recommendations is "stronger and more centralized management of the intelligence community, and, in general, the creation of a genuinely integrated community, instead of a loose confederation of independent agencies."

 

The panel urged Bush to give broad authority to John Negroponte when he is confirmed as the director of national intelligence.

 

"It won't be easy to provide this leadership to the intelligence components of the Defense Department or to the CIA. They are some of the government's most headstrong agencies," the report warned the president.

 

"Sooner or later, they will try to run around -- or over -- the [director of national intelligence]. Then, only your determined backing will convince them that we cannot return to the old ways."

 

The report also called for changes at the FBI, including the creation of a new National Security Service that would merge the agency's counterterrorism and counterintelligence divisions.

 

The commission recommended establishing: a National Counterproliferation Center to oversee intelligence on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; a new human intelligence directorate in the CIA; and mission managers to coordinate analysis on specific topics across the entire intelligence community.

'Much to be done'

 

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid faulted the report for failing to address "our national security policy-making process."

 

"I believe it is essential that we hold both the intelligence agencies and senior policy-makers accountable," the Nevada Democrat said.

 

Reid called on the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, "to investigate whether Bush administration officials misused intelligence."

 

CIA Director Porter Goss welcomed the report, saying the commission was "right to underscore the difficulty of gathering intelligence on the WMD issue." Goss agreed that there is a need for "more robust" intelligence collection and analysis.

 

"We can never be complacent," said Goss, adding "there is still much to be done" to transform the intelligence community.

 

In a prepared statement, former CIA Director George Tenet called the report a "serious" one with recommendations that require "careful consideration."

 

Tenet, who left the CIA last summer after a seven-year tenure, said he wished the commission had reflected more on how far the community has come in "rebuilding American intelligence."

 

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat and vice chairman of the intelligence committee, said the report underscores that the intelligence community, Congress and the White House have "more work to do."

 

"The threat posed to our national security from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is real, lasting and growing," he said. "We must learn from our past errors."

 

Michael Chertoff, the new head of the Department of Homeland Security, said his agency has implemented numerous new policies to better safeguard the nation.

 

"We will utilize this report as guidance to strengthen these efforts," he said.

 

credit: http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/03/31/int...port/index.html

[2GOLD 0]

So the end result everyone agrees on is our intellgience community needs repair....did we REALLY need 4 years to figure that out?

[Guest MikeSC]

So the end result everyone agrees on is our intellgience community needs repair....did we REALLY need 4 years to figure that out?

It's the government. That is about as efficient as they get.

-=Mike

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

Feel free to skip this one KKK.

 

 

 

Once again, the "threat" from Iraq not quite as immediate as we were led to believe. And oh those poor soldiers that are going to get fucked when and if they finally do get to come home.

 

 

 

Oh and I almost forgot! Firing Tenet doesn't exactly qualify as holding him accountable when there are 1500 plus dead AMERICAN SOLDIERS as a result of his fuck up. Call it hindsight bias if you want. You'll see how much water it holds coming from the crowd that tells welfare mothers they should get no money for no other reason than they should be held ACCOUNTABLE for their actions. OK, fair enough right? So if we were to hold this issue up to your "conservative standards of accountability" then I would expect that since so many AMERICAN SOLDIERS are DEAD that you Mike (and people who think as you do) would... hmmmm EXPECT that Tenet, Wolfyboy, and perhaps even your beloved Bush be taken out back and shot. Sound about EVEN? That IS how you (and people like you) think about things correct? Nuke the whole area and no more problem? RIGHT?

 

 

Trust in that? Fuck that!