Do You Want the Short Answer or the Long Answer?
A friend sent me a story about Paul Pillar’s piece in the upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. Pillar spent 28 years with the CIA; he was the agency’s leading counterterrorism analyst until his retirement last year. He alleges that the administration manipulated intelligence to justify the war.
The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of “cherry-picking” intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
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“Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war,” Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the administration “went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq.”
“It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized,” Pillar wrote.
In a comment accompanying the email my friend asked, “Does anyone care about this????”
My reply: “No. Half the country knew this was the case three years ago; the other half doesn’t care and never will.”
Tell me I’m wrong.
Quick quiz for today:
Which of the following will Fox News imply in its prime time news cast tonight:
A. Pillar, a disgruntled former CIA analyst, is simply too gutless to admit that his own mistakes resulted in the faulty intelligence upon which the administration relied in its decision to go to war;
B. Pillar is another example of Washington’s ruling class of bureaucrat elites, all hell-bent on undermining the administration, as described in Fred Barnes’ brilliant book, Rebel In Chief;
C. Pillar might be a pedophile;
D. All of the above.
One Response to “Do You Want the Short Answer or the Long Answer?”
What is “D”, Alex?
Comment by refuge on February 10, 2006 at 5:46 pm.