Intelligence and Assumption

To me, the most worrisome part of our failure to find extensive WMD stocks, or at least active development programs, in Iraq after the war was that we had seemed so certain of our knowledge. In large part, this was corroborated by the fact that even those countries opposing our Iraq policies shared the view that Iraq had at least WMD programs; they simply didn't see that as a problem. The problem in all of this is that I did not see how we could be so far wrong and so certain we were right. And if that is the case, how could we trust our intelligence in future situations, where the reliability of that intelligence could decide whether or not to initiate a war?

Now, Kenneth Pollack looks at the intelligence picture, and what went wrong. Given Mr. Pollack's credentials, this is a very persuasive article.

What's interesting to me is how much of the intelligence picture was based on projections and assumptions. We know what was happening up to a certain time, and the Iraqi rhetoric has not changed, therefore we plotted a straight-line course for the WMD programs. Our allies and nominal allies all agreed with our assessment (some even went further), so that is confirmation that we are right. Saddam says he has the weapons, and he's had them before, and we can't think of why he'd give them up when he says he has them, so he must have them.

All of these are rational and reasonable conclusions. The problem is that they are in total so far off the mark. It seems to me that we need to begin addressing the problem sooner rather than later. One way to do this is to be scrupulously clear on what we know for sure, and what we infer. This has to be done both within the intelligence community, and within the political leadership. It might even make sense to separate intelligence gathering and intelligence analysis into different agencies. In any case, whatever the correct answers are to fix our intelligence analysis, we need to begin now, if we haven't already. The potential consequences of failure to reform are vast and unpleasant.

Posted by Jeff at January 12, 2004 10:57 PM | Link Cosmos