Did he really read the intelligence?

May 26, 2007

At a White House press conference this week, NBC’s David Gregory asked the president a highly relevant question: “Can you explain why you believe you’re still a credible messenger on the war?” Bush didn’t hesitate. “I’m credible because I read the intelligence, David,” he said.

It’s one thing to read intelligence reports; it’s another to take the reports’ warnings seriously.

Months before the invasion of Iraq, U.S. intelligence agencies predicted that it would be likely to spark violent sectarian divides and provide al-Qaeda with new opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Analysts warned that war in Iraq also could provoke Iran to assert its regional influence and “probably would result in a surge of political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups” in the Muslim world.

The intelligence assessments, made in January 2003 and widely circulated within the Bush administration before the war, said that establishing democracy in Iraq would be “a long, difficult and probably turbulent challenge.” The assessments noted that Iraqi political culture was “largely bereft of the social underpinnings” to support democratic development.

More than four years after the March 2003 invasion, with Iraq still mired in violence and 150,000 U.S. troops there under continued attack from al-Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents, the intelligence warnings seem prophetic. Other predictions, however, were less than accurate. Intelligence analysts assessed that any postwar increase in terrorism would slowly subside in three to five years, and that Iraq’s vast oil reserves would quickly facilitate economic reconstruction.

In other words, the White House managed to reject what intelligence agencies got right and embrace what the agencies got wrong. How exquisitely true to form.

In a strong dissent, Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.), the committee’s vice chairman, said the inquiry itself was “a bad idea,” and called on the committee to stop asking questions about how badly the administration screwed up before and start focusing on “the myriad of threats we face today.”

Of course. What’s done is done; let’s not dwell on who cherry-picked what in order to kill whom. Please. Accountability demands answers. Even more importantly, the same White House that made these tragic mistakes before is still at it. If we don’t take note of how tragically wrong the Bush gang was in 2003, some may forget why they lack credibility in 2007.

Post Script: I should note that Bush was asked specifically about this report, shortly before it was released, by CNN’s Ed Henry.

Q: Mr. President, a new Senate report this morning contends that your administration was warned before the war that by invading Iraq you would actually give Iran and al Qaeda a golden opportunity to expand their influence, the kind of influence you were talking about with al Qaeda yesterday, and with Iran this morning. Why did you ignore those warnings, sir?

Bush: Ed, going into Iraq we were warned about a lot of things, some of which happened, some of which didn’t happen. And, obviously, as I made a decision as consequential as that, I weighed the risks and rewards of any decision. I firmly believe the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. I know the Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein in power. I think America is safer without Saddam Hussein in power.

It was a straightforward question that Bush had no choice but to dodge. Why did he ignore the warnings? Because they told him what he didn’t want to hear.

Bush didn’t read the intelligence, but he’s got an excuse. He can’t read.

“No President left behind”…before it’s too late!

  • What an obnoxious jerk.

    Yes he “read” the intelligence, that was “fixed” by people who wanted to go to war.
    He either does not have the smarts to delve further and ask pertinent questions about what he reads, or he is as guilty as the rest of the neocons.
    I don’t know which is worse, either he is evil or stupid.

  • “I’m credible because I read the intelligence, David,” he said.

    With apologies to Brian from Family Guy:

    “Are you sure you read the intelligence, Mr. President? Are you sure you didn’t read, nothing?”

  • The neocons decided years ago what they wanted to do in Iraq and 9/11 gave them the cover to do it. Intelligence wasn’t seen as a basis for making an informed decision but a means to help them sell what they’d already decided to do. They read it, not to learn any but with an eye to what they were looking for. So I don’t think they rejected anything — they never even considered it.

    It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that these guys think and behave like we do, but they don’t. Ideology comes first, and to that end they will say and do things that would never occur to us — and if it did, we’d rule it out immediately.

  • That Senate report also contains an eighteen page addition view section authored by Kit Bond and signed by Senators Hatch and Burr which deals with-are you ready?-Valierie Plame. It seems that they think she may have lied when she recently testified before a House committee. I left a comment at the the Last Hurrah about this. I hoped to get Emptywheel’s take, but she has posted anything yet. Does anyone here have any insights?

  • This is Bush’s legacy in a peanut shell.

    At the risk of my own head exploding, I’ll grant him a benefit of doubt. Intelligence reports are as much voodoo as science. Considering what Feith’s outfit was up to, there’s no doubt that there was conflicting ‘intelligence.’

    Smoke is coming out of my ears now, because I’ll even be gracious enough to grant that Bush might not know a cooked book from a cook book.

    But even accounting for all of that, there was no plan B. Any middling Wal*Mart worker, given the title of assistant manager (instead of actual pay), knows you need to have plans for all contingencies. The quality of the contingency plans, good or bad, is the measure of the manager.

    It’s not that Bush was poorly armed with a bad contingency plan – It’s that he didn’t see the need to even consider one. That, taken with the contingencies these reports demanded, is nothing less than an astonishing dereliction of duty.

    It’s no wonder they tried and keep trying to kill this report. Bush’s performance is simply indefensible on every conceivable level. In a sane world, this is the stuff of a speedy impeachment.

  • I don’t know which is worse, either he is evil or stupid.

    Comment by Diane

    Never rule out “all of the above.”

  • No—he did NOT “read the intelligence”—and here the key to support the hypothesis:

    When a guilty man is confronted with a few mere factiods regarding his crimes—even though he isn’t being accused of those crimes—he will tend towards the fault of denying any involvement, and begin constructing evidence to the contrary. Such was the case with Bu$h. When the slightest suggestions began to smolder as to whether he had read any of the intelligence reports, Bu$h went on one of his “HappyTalk” binges—this time, about how much he reads, and how he was having a reading contest with Karl Rove.

    You do remember that, don’t you?

  • William Hazlitt, Pomp and Ignorance (1823)

    The world has been doing little else but playing at make-believe all its lifetime. For several thousand years its chief rage was to paint large pieces of wood and smear them with gore and call them gods and offer victims to them – slaughtered hecatombs, the fat of goats and oxen, or human sacrifices – showing its love of show, of cruelty, and imposture; and woe to him who should peep through the blanket of the dark to cry: hold, hold.

    The game was carried on through all the first ages of the world, and is still kept up in many parts of it; and it is impossible to describe the wars, massacres, horrors, miseries, and crimes, to which it gave colour, sanctity, and sway. At length, reason prevailed over imagination so far, that these brute idols and their altars were overturned: it was thought too much to set up stocks and stones, golden calves and brazen serpents as bona fide gods and goddesses, which men were to fall down and worship at their peril.

    It was thought a bold stride to divert the course of our imaginations, the overflowings of our enthusiasms, our love of the mighty and the marvellous, from the dead to the living subject, and there we stick. We have got living idols, instead of dead ones; and we fancy that they are real, and put faith in them accordingly. We take a child from his birth and we agree, when he grows up to be a man, to heap the highest honours of the state upon him and to pay the most devoted homage to his will.

    Is there anything in the person, any mark, any likelihood, to warrant this sovereign awe and dread? No: he may be little better than an idiot, little short of a madman, and yet he is no less qualified for king. Can we make any given individual taller or stronger or wiser than other men, or different from what nature intended him to be? No; but we can make a king of him. We cannot add a cubit to the stature, or instill a virtue into the minds of monarchs – but we can put a sceptre into their hands, a crown upon their heads, we can set them on an eminence, we can surround them with circumstance, we can aggrandize them with power, we can pamper their appetites, we can pander to their wills. We can do everything to exalt them in external rank and station – nothing to lift them one step higher in the scale of moral or intellectual excellence.

    Source: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRhazlitt.htm

  • Thanks EvilPoet, that post says a lot about our boy-king.

    Whether Bush “reads” his intellligence reports, whether we can argue further that he actually comprehends them or whether that statement was riffing off of what he said about the briefing papers warning of 9/11: “I’ve covered my ass,” matters little. L. Paul Bremer never seems to have had access that information from 2003 and he’s the one that started rolling the rock of insurgency down a very steep hill.

    What bugs me is Bush’s comment to Ed Henry. He sounds like a guy who rolled the dice and came up craps. Bummer. W does not understand the concept of culpability, of responsibility. He does not understand that his failures should come with a price for him to pay. Bush seems to be the living embodiment of the expression, “No brain, no pain.”

    Bush’s record proves he can’t discern what the intelligence says, delegates that responsibility to a fellow incompetent or plainly just doesn’t care (as his response to Henry suggests) so his response to David Gregory is moot.

    CB – The Monty Python reference is welcome and apt.

  • If I read the prospectus for my RRSP, would it make me an Investment Broker? Although Bush is certainly as thick as two short planks, he probably CAN read – but simply reading the opinions of experts doesn’t make you one: especially if you ignore their advice in favor of “going with your gut”.

    I hope everybody has learned a lesson from this. If you put a retard in charge of smart people, he or she can’t help thinking that your vote somehow made them smarter. Bush’s smug pride over being president rather than his teachers who gave him borderline-failure grades backs me up on this. Next time, elect somebody less dumb. It doesn’t have to be some fancy-pants merlot-sipping liberal who quotes Shakespeare, but please – somebody smart.

  • Tens of thousands of people have died and more will die because a nation anxious to kill Middle Easterners gave George Bush, through its irresponsible representatives, permission to indulge himself in a personal psychodrama, fearing no adverse consequences in return. No intelligence report predicted that, but I’ll bet that will be the judgement of history.

  • I can *read* a book on quantum physics. It doesn’t mean I’ll *understand* anything of what I’m reading. OTOH… I’d know I wasn’t reading a book on Renaissance music… 🙂

  • Bush is pretending he knows something the rest of us don’t.
    That way he cannot be held accountable.
    He’s such a wimp!

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