'Group Think' Led to Iraq WMD Assessment

Fox News ^ | July 09, 2004 | Liza Porteus

[ZULU]

'Group Think' Led to Iraq WMD Assessment

Friday, July 09, 2004

By Liza Porteus

WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community overstated the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States and used less-than-100 percent credible information to justify the war in Iraq, the Senate Intelligence Committee found in a scathing report issued Friday.

[doug from upland]

Blah, blah, blah. The president did the right thing. Hussein had to be stopped. We actually have a president who takes seriously his most important job description.

[PeterPrinciple]

All Saddam had to do is tell us we he did with them.....we knew he had them, just don't know where they are now.

[ZULU]

"Senate" and "Intelligence" is an oxymoron. My guess is most of the Senators on that Committee know as much about intelligence as Tom Kean knows about nationla security.

What is depressing is that the Republicans on this committee helped drive a knife inot Bush's back on this issue.

I said it before and I say it again: Democrats = Evil; Republicans = Stupid.

[ZULU]

Exactly.

The facts are:

Intelligence gathering is NOT an empirical science.

The fact that no WMDs have been found yet doesn't mean they aren't still around.

ALL the world's intelligence services probably know more about Saddam than this collection of political clowns.

And I'm SUPER-P####D OFF at the Senate Repubs on this committee. Are they TOTAL morons or merely just gutless capons???

Who ARE the members of this committee ANYWAY?? Does ANYBODY know???

[JLS]

How dumb is this. First of all WMD have been found in Iraq. Did any really think that on every corner there woulud be a WMD box next to the Iraqi Post box?

Second, it matters not a whit whether or not the regime knew they had WMD or not. [The did of course as the existence of a binary shell more sophisticated than they had in 1990 shows.] Heck it might be more dangerous if they had left over WMD that the regime did not know about. This unaccounted for WMD could have more easily been given to terrorist by some true believer in the Iraqi military.

So I guess these morons will take this blame and then the blame later on when the Iraqi WMD they first claimed existed and now claim did not exist are used against someone somewhere on earth. They better hope it is in Jordan not the US.

[hopespringseternal]

Are they TOTAL morons or merely just gutless capons???

They are sniveling cowards who retreat every time the press charges. Right now they are trying to cut the president loose because they think this will be an election issue.

Justice would be a big fat WMD shoved right up their collective @sses.

[bigjoesaddle]

This is an attempt to compare The Iraq War to the 'Bay of Pigs', a famous "Group Think" disaster.

[thoughtomator]

BS. Group think is what is leading this cover up. They know the WMDs exist, they just don't want to tell us, before the election is over, because then we'll have to invade Syria and Lebanon.

[Lexington Green]

The Senate Intelligence Committee exonerates itself by blaming the hired-help. Despicable punks... America is not safe in their hands.

[Question_Assumptions]

What amazes me through all of this is how nobody mentions Kosovo when there are so many parallels (and Tony Blair was involved with both). In both cases, you have disgruntled refugees exagerating their case to Americans so that the Americans will invade and kick out the group in power.

[Dr. Frank fan]

used less-than-100 percent credible information

Horror of horrors! Someone PLEASE explain to the juvenile nincompoops out there that (on any nontrivial matter) there's NO SUCH THING as "100 percent credible information" in intelligence. Ever!

I really hate how the public debate about "intelligence" has been dumbed down and oprah-ized to the point where people actually have this bizarre, puerile expectation that our intelligence can be "100 percent" about something. Intelligence is ALWAYS about INTERPRETATION of scanty information. To say that we should not act until/unless we get to the "100 percent" threshold, is to say that we should paralyze ourselves into stupor. To NOT act "because the intelligence is not 100 percent" (i.e. 99, 95, 92..) would just be downright irresponsible.

It's precisely this mentality which led to 9/11.

"Before the war, the U.S. intelligence community told the president, as well as the Congress and the public, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and if left unchecked, probably would have a nuclear weapon this decade," Roberts said during the press conference.

Interesting. IMHO everything in the preceding sentence is true. Certainly no part of it has been proven incorrect.

It also says U.S. officials relied too much on intelligence information from Iraqi dissidents and exiles who may have had their own agenda and didn't penetrate Saddam's inner circle effectively enough.

1. Yes, this is just swell, let's build into our system an anti-dissident/exile bias. Can't trust dissidents/exiles! Only trust info from dictators and their flunkies.

2. Heck, what a great criticism to say that we didn't penetrate Saddam's inner circle effectively enough. Yes I agree that would have been swell! By the same token it would be swell if I would just pick the CORRECT lottery numbers for a change, and invent cold fusion as well.

Now we're raising our expectations to the point where we're supposed to pentrate the "inner circle" of a Stalinist dictator? We have NEVER done that. Nobody has! But... let me guess... the recommendation is that unless/until we do in the future, no wars to oust bad guys. right?

Rockefeller said. "And we in Congress would not have authorized that war — we would not have authorized that war with 75 votes — if we knew what we know now."

Of course Rockefeller speaks for the other 534 members of Congress because... um... ?

"Leading up to September 11, our government didn't connect the dots. In Iraq, we were even more culpable because the dots themselves never existed," Rockefeller continued.

I think Rockefeller's fallen a little too in love with his own metaphor. Plenty of "dots" exist but Rockefeller banishes them all into nothingness with a cute turn of phrase.

What a great way to improve our national security and intelligence gathering - hand it all over to posturing, point-scoring politicians!

"Nothing in this report absolves the White House of its responsibility for mishandling of the country's intelligence," Mark Kitchens, spokesman for presidential hopeful John Kerry, said in a statement.

Well, except for the part which says the CIA screwed up and not due to WH pressure...

"The fact is that when it comes to national security, the buck stops at the White House, not anywhere else."

Ok... and ousting Saddam Hussein has... harmed..? national security? Go ahead make that case. LOL

"The men and women of the American intelligence community are not motivated or guided by political or personal agendas," McLaughlin said.

Well, I don't buy that for one second. But of course he has to say this kind of thing.

"It was clear to us in this room … that they had made up their mind to go to war," Rockefeller said,

Yes, that was clear to me. So? He is the Commander in chief, decided upon war, asked for your authorization, and then gave it. "He had made up his mind to go to war" is not just a silly complaint it's an absurd one. Of COURSE he had, otherwise why would he have asked for War Powers?

adding that he regretted his vote authorizing the war.

Heh. That "regret" and a dollar won't get you a cup of coffee. What about "the buck stops here"? Your vote is your vote.

The independent commission probing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, recently concluded that there was no connection between Iraq and the attacks but didn't rule out a general Iraq-Al Qaeda connection.

Wow! If only this would have made it into the headlines, which all said "commission says no connection"...

The group concluded that the intelligence community suffered from "collective group think"

Isn't amateur sociopsychology fun?

"This group think caused the community to interpret ambiguous evidence such as the procurement of dual use technology" to mean Iraq had an active weapons program, Roberts said.

See, here's the thing. If I'm in the intelligence community, or national security advisor, or the President, and I learn about Iraq getting dual use technology then "Iraq has an active weapons program" SHOULD be my working hypothesis until disproven. Anything else is just irresponsible.

What has happened in the past year+ is that Democrats have perversely twisted things around to the point where now "innocent until proven guilty 100%" is supposed to be the standard.

Which is just insane. And why (D)s simply cannot be trusted to guard our nation.

"It is clear that this group think also extended to our allies" and other nations, "all of whom did believe that Saddam Hussein did have active WMD program."

Talk about arrogant. All the intelligence agencies of all the world's nations were wrong, declares the Senator from Kansas. It can't be that they were right and the stuff was moved! No, clearly, EVERYONE was wrong.

I don't buy this for one second.

Intelligence managers failed to encourage analysts to challenge assumptions and counsel analysts who may have lost their objectivity

Again, this is a dangerous game they play. "Assumptions" should be "he's belligerent". "Objectivity" is for the suicidal. Again: this is national security not science class! What the hell does "objectivity" mean, in practice? It means an innocent-till-proven-guilty standard given to Saddam Hussein.

This is the loophole in Westerners' addled thinking which makes terrorism profitable. This is precisely why tyrants are attracted to terrorism in the first place.

[mass55th]

Group think. Now where did they come up with that term? Maybe it's the potically correct way to say "mass hallucination," which is what every nation who provided similar info on Saddam would have had to be suffering from. The Senate Intelligence Committee is right and the rest of the world and the CIA are wrong. Kind of reminds you of the Clinton's claiming that all of Bill's accusers were lying and he was the only one telling the truth.

[mass55th]

potically=politically

damn fingers

[jwalsh07]

COngress is a joke. They accept responsibility for nothing and in their effort to avoid responsibilty raise the bar for any future POTUS to defend this country preemptively to impossible heights.

This committee has damaged this country every bit as much as the Church Committee. Fools.

[Ditter]

Did "group think' gas the Kurds? Saddam has/had WMD's. Why did he employ Dr. Germ & Chemical Ali? They weren't inventing & manufacturing household cleaners & insect spray.

[garjog]

"They know the WMDs exist, they just don't want to tell us, before the election is over, because then we'll have to invade Syria and Lebanon."

That is what I thought, then my wife said, after this report won't they say that the intelligence is hyped? Doesn't this report make a preemptive war a lot harder to get approved?

[bray]

Group Think explains the Dinosaur Press. Has anyone wrote an article speculating the chances of WMD being buried or snuck out of the country?? Of course not because they write and think to their other reporters. There is no original thought in the Stone-age press.

Pray for W and Our Troops

[tobyhill]

I don't care what this report says because anyone with a shred of common sense knows he had WMD. I haven't seen the whole report but from what I understand this committee did find evidence of illegal missiles, attempts to acquire nuke material and unmanned aerial vehicle to distribute chemical or biological weapons. A senior Iraqi official has now admitted that the UAVs were intended for the delivery of biological weapons.

[ZULU]

I totally agree with what the other posters to this thread have stated.

The aggrevating thing about this whole episode is the craveness and/or stupidity of the Republicans on that committee.

You would EXPECT the Dems to try and make a political issue of the whole thing - it helps THEIR candidate.

But like the 9-1-1 Committee and people like Tom Kean, you certainly would EXPECT the Republicans to protect THEIR own candidate and office holder - ESPECIALLY when the posture of the Dems on this subject is so OBVIOUSLY incorrect.

It looks more and more as though the Republicans have to either "clean house" and somehow purge these people who don't support their own party, or another political party needs to be formed which is philosophically akin to the Republican Party, but more capable of functioning as an effective opponent to the crypto-communists in the Democratic Party.

It isn't the Republican message which which is wrong - its some of the so-called "Repubicans" like Pat Roberts, Tom Kean, Schwarzenegger, Giuliani et al who are way off base.