Loosing Feith

As if the pre-war intel couldn't get anymore ridiculous...

Let's review some of the key players:
Lewis "Scooter" Libby: former Chief of Staff to the VP, is in on-trial for cooking the intel on pre-war Iraqi nuclear threat.

Douglas Feith: this neoconservative was in charge of the "Office of Special Plans"--a right wing intelligence gathering agency--leading up to the war in 2003.

Ahmad Chalabi: the once hailed "George Washington of Iraq" by neo-cons, that was part of the three-man group that formed the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a group that was trying to get Saddam ousted.


Here is the main problem: The information channels that have long been established were circumvented because they didn't suite the desired taste. Here the US has several agents in the field, producing information that went against INC reports. Instead of relying heavily on CIA intelligence, we were second guessing them by establishing things like the Office of Special Plans.

What were they doing? They were authorizing 'back-channel' talks, and intelligence shopping with shady characters like Manucher Ghorbanifar (Iran-Contra scandal), and Ahmed Chalabi. Ahmed produced a lot of the info that was used to make the case against Saddam. Back in 2002, Robert Dreyfus from "The Nation" reported:

"Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency.," he wrote. "The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq. ... Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push for war." Much of the pro-war faction's information came from INC, even though "most Iraq hands with long experience in dealing with that country's tumultuous politics consider the INC's intelligence-gathering abilities to be nearly nil. ... The Pentagon's critics are appalled that intelligence provided by the INC might shape U.S. decisions about going to war against Baghdad. At the CIA and at the State Department, Ahmed Chalabi, the INC's leader, is viewed as the ineffectual head of a self-inflated and corrupt organization skilled at lobbying and public relations, but not much else."

Now recently we have Douglas Feith under fire because today the information Feith presented to the Whitehouse--supposedly 'credible'--that showed a relationship between terrorists and Al Queda. This was shot down today by Mr. Gimble (Inspector General for DoD). He said that Feith's actions were sometimes "inappropriate" because they "did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community... [they] did not provide 'the most accurate analysis of intelligence' to senior decision-makers..."

It seems to me more and more that the intel that supposedly justifies us going into Iraq, becomes less and less credible as time goes on. Relying on biased information, and trying to bias the credible information is not grounds for war.

This really makes me sad.