Nearly all of the debate about pre-war intelligence on Iraq has focused on motivation — everyone knows it was wrong; the question is whether it was intentionally manipulated and exploited by the Bush administration or not.
But the Wall Street Journal raised an interesting point today about the pre-war intelligence. A lot of it — particularly the parts about post-conflict chaos — was right on the money.
“During the run-up to the war, the intelligence community produced dozens of assessments explaining the range of problems that could develop in postwar Iraq,” says Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, a Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is currently probing the development and use of intelligence in the months leading up the March 2003 invasion. “This is an area… regrettably, where the administration paid little attention,” he adds.
Mr. Rockefeller and other critics say the U.S. would have been better-prepared to rehabilitate Iraq if it had listened more to these warnings. In particular, the State Department in 2002 conducted an exhaustive survey called the Future of Iraq Project. The endeavor involved 17 federal agencies and hundreds of Iraqis, both inside and outside Iraq. The $5 million project produced volumes of research that its authors hoped would serve as a blueprint for remodeling Iraq. The volumes were never made public but have been reviewed by the committee.
Granted, this isn’t entirely new and reports about accurate-but-ignored warnings have been circulating for a long while. But it’s nevertheless helpful to get this kind of reminder once in a while about how the White House embraced the intelligence that was wrong while rejecting the intelligence that was right.
My favorite part, however, was the Republican response to these concerns.
White House aides and Republican Senate staffers say Democrats are seeking to cherry-pick from the prewar record, focusing on areas where the intelligence was right but ignoring the much broader body of information that was being analyzed.
You read that right — Republicans are accusing Democrats of cherry-picking Iraq intelligence to make a political point.
I know, I laughed too.