Feith-based intelligence gatheringFollow

Before the war there was something called a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). It concluded things like: if we invade Iraq, the US will be less safe. Iraq will not use WMD unless we invade. Iraq will not spread WMD to terrorist groups unless we invade.

And this was revealed to the senate intelligence subcommittee before the war. They asked president Bush - since this is a grand review of many agencies - why he was contradicting it (in fact, the eventual war resolution contradicts it). Did he have other intelligence - and if so could he share it with their committee. He simply didn't answer. A heavily redacted version of the NIE was released literally some hours before the vote. The "key judgments" which are basically what passes for conclusions - were not. The version released basically held only the parts which seemed to support the president. It's a big document - a grand review of all available intelligence - by selective editing you can get it to say the opposite - or virtually anything you want.

This was my prewar basis for opposing the war. Our best intelligence (seen by the senate intelligence subcommittee) said going to war in Iraq will make us less safe.

I stated all this here - prewar - and have restated it on several occasions. I usually cite a this american life radio episode where you can hear senators on the committee speak about it.

The only republican to vote against the war was on the committee and had access to the full NIE prewar.

Yes. I'd been drinking the Kool-Aid.

DECLASSIFIED PORTIONS OF THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE

______


HON. PETER T. KING

of new york

in the house of representatives

Tuesday, July 22, 2003

Mr. KING of New York. Mr. Speaker, as I stated yesterday, President
Bush's adversaries--both in the political arena and the media--have
chosen to ignore or distort the facts regarding Iraq's pursuit of a
nuclear weapons program. To counter the numerous inaccuracies created
by too many people who should know better, I am including in the Record
the second half of the declassified portions of the National
Intelligence Estimate released by the White House this past Friday.

State/INR Alternative View

. . . acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but
INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support
such a judgment. Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has
launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear
weapons program, INR is unwilling to speculate that such an
effort began soon after the departure of UN inspectors or to
project a timeline for the completion of activities it does
not now see happening. As a result, INR is unable to predict
when Iraq could acquire a nuclear device or weapon.
In INR's view Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is
central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its
nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the
tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors.
INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes
lraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas
centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds
unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the
case that they are intended for that purpose. INR considers
it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another
purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets. The
very large quantities being sought, the way the tubes were
tested by the Iraqis, and the atypical lack of attention to
operational security in the procurement efforts are among the
factors, in addition to the DOE assessment, that lead INR to
conclude that the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq's
nuclear weapon program.

Confidence Levels for Selected Key Judgments in This Estimate


High Confidence

Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its
chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary
to UN resolutions.
We are not detecting portions of these weapons programs.
Iraq possesses proscribed chemical and biological weapons
and missiles.
Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once
it acquires sufficient weapons grade fissile material.


moderate confidence

Iraq does not yet have a nuclear weapon or sufficient
material to make one but is likely to have a weapon by 2007
to 2009.


Low Confidence

When Saddam would use weapons of mass-destruction.
Whether Saddam would engage in clandestine attacks against
the U.S. Homeland.
Whether in desperation Saddam would share chemical or
biological weapons with al-Qa'ida.

AS Youssarian said, What was released the the public (via the senate) was a heavily edited version of the NIE. This is the version Youssarion has given us in a quote. It's the edited version that left in only things that seemed to support the president's claimed view (that Iraque both had nuclear weapons, and were prepared to use them against other countries in a first strike, or to give to Al-Quaida to use in a first strike.)

BUT the people who saw the unedited version claim that the editing makes what was left in say the opposite to what was concluded by the report as a whole.

So that list talking about existing missiles and bilogical weapons, and the timescale in which Iraq could build a nuclear bomb, and it's intent to do so, looks really bad in isolation. Reportedly the rest of the NIE had a lot more information about Iraq, which puts that list into context, which was that that Iraq wasn't likely to hand over any nuclear or biological weapons to Al Quaida, or to use them against America in a first strike themselves. What was more likely was that these weapons were reserved in case any other nation, including America, attacked Iraq.

Sadly we dont' have access to the whole of the NIE report, only hearsay by the people who saw it, and recordings of people who saw the repot talking to each other about it.

The people who saw the full NIE report all voted against the war. The people who only saw the edited version (the one in Youssarian's quote), voted for the war.

Edited, Feb 18th 2007 11:48am by Aripyanfar

You're kidding right? Look *you* said that there was an NIE which outlined the risks that would occur if the US invaded Iraq. You made the three statements I quoted above. You did not bother to provide a single quote or cite to support your statements.

I responded by looking for intelligence reports that laid out potential issues if the US invaded Iraq. I found references to a set of "reports" (not NIEs) with such issues. I listed what I found and showed that they did not match the ones you wrote.

Then you responded by quoting an NIE. However, the NIE you quoted didn't even mention any consequences as a result of the US invading Iraq. You can play word games all you want, but at the end of the day you made a claim that you absolutely cannot back up. You have zero evidence for it. None. Zip. Zero. Nada.

I'm not confused over what is and is not an NIE. I simply attempted, in the lack of a cite from you, to figure out what the heck you were talking about. It does not change at all the fact that your statements have zero support to them. It definately does not change the fact that the NIE you finally did quote doesn't remotely mention the things you claimed it did.



You're using some far left "news" show as a source? You're kidding me, right? I think you meant show number 227 also...

Maybe if you lifted your head out of the far left "news", you might have a clue about how the real world works. Just a thought.



Again though. We have a Democrat Senator's version of statements made to him in a letter from CIA directory Tenent about what reports were out there that weren't included in the NIE (he can't say what was in the NIE cause it's classified, so this is his way of skirting around that bit of law while making it appear that he's "in the know"). The problem is that those are (as I pointed out earlier) "reports". There are lots of those. With varying leves of accuracy, and from analysts with varying levels of skill. An NIE takes those reports (tons of them) and figures out which ones have the highest probability to be true and puts out a broad assessment based on that.

It is not surprising or even unusual for an NIE to contradict statements made in a number of intelligence reports that were used as sources for the NIE. Because it's not unusual at all to have multiple reports that contradict eachother based on the source of the information and the analyst making the assessment in the report. You seem to have gotten hung up on this issue, but it's really not that significant. The reason it didn't get much media traction is because ever single time this issue is raised anyone with any experience in the intelligence community explains this to the newly educated reporter and he realizes that it's a dumb story to purue.


Graham knows this. But he was banking on the fact that most people (that's *you*) don't and that some people (you again) would be swayed to an anti-war position by this information, no matter how many times it was shown to be irrelevant. In a democracy everyone is entitled to an opinion. But not everyone's opinion ends up being policy, right? It would be ludicrous to argue that an elected official wasn't "really elected" because some of the people who voted didn't vote for him. In the same way, you can't say an NIE is incorrect because some of the reports that were used to form the NIE don't agree with the final conclusions in the NIE. The NIE represents the collected analysis of many reports, just as the elected official was elected based on the results of many votes. Just as you can always find someone who voted for "the other guy", you'll always be able to find intelligence reports that say something different then what appeared in the final version of an NIE.

It's a silly argument. Most people recognize that.


Oh. And just to nip one more bit of stupidity in the bud:

Presumably, the Senate Special Committee on intelligence saw the full NIE, right? The members at the time were the following and how they voted on the war:

Democrats: Bob Graham (yea), Carl Levin (nay), John D. Rockefeller IV (yea), Dianne Fienstein (yea), Ron Wyden (nay), Richard Durbin (nay), Evan Byah (yea), John Edwards (yea), Barbara Mikulski (nay)

Republicans: Richard C. Shelby (yea), Jon Kyl (yea), James N. Inhofe (yea), Orrin G. Hatch (yea), Pat Roberts (yea), Mike DeWine (yea), Fred Thompson (yea), Richard G. Lugar (yea)


Out of a total of 9 Democrats, 5 of them voted yea, 4 voted nay. Out of 8 Republicans all of them voted yea. Point being that not only did a majority of the Senate Intelligence Committee vote to authorize the war, but a majority of Democrats in that committee did, including Bob Graham himself.

Kinda strange don't you think that he was so concerned that the intelligence being handed out to the rest of congress (those without access to the full NIE) was a misrepresentation of the facts, yet he himself felt that the justifications for war listed in said resolution were sufficient cause for war...

Obviously he didn't himself believe that those inconsistencies were significant enough to make a difference. Maybe you should take his lead on that instead of continuing to wave your arms around like a crazy person about something he mentioned 5 years ago that even he didn't think was that important.