Only 18% of Intel Still Says NO TIES; pt2/5 "Those NO TIES Lies"

"We reviewed 18% of the captured Iraqi documents, and can say without a doubt that..."

ROTFLMAO

Hello, thanks for posting this. Would you ping me when post threads about the DOCEX docs? Thanks.

Only 18% of Intel Still Says NO TIES; pt2/5 "Those NO TIES Lies"

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Unfortunately only 18% of this thread is decipherable. Not the best excerpt and headline attempt.

So if I read the original article correctly, the headline claims:

"Only 18% of Intel Still Says There Were No Ties Between al Qaeda and Hussein"

but the article asserts:

"That means that 26,000,000 docs have been partially translated out of the 120,000,000+ that have been recovered; barely 18% have been partially translated, and we’re to believe that the claims of “No Ties” as presented by the media and opponents to the war is somehow a definitive assessment?"

and then concludes:

"An investigation that claims to conclude after examining (at best) 18% of the information is not conclusive. It’s misleading."

The last is quite true, but the article as a whole suggests that 18% of the total docs have been reviewed, and only 18% of the total docs suggest "No Ties". That would lead to a logical conclusion that pretty much all the docs reviewed so far support the theory of "No Ties."

I'm not saying that this is proof of "No Ties", but the article is a mess and undercuts its own theme.

Sorry to hear that it was hard for you to understand. You are the first to say so.

I'd have preferred to put the entire title and article on Freep, but couldn't.

You're point is a remarkable one in that it points out that not only was the conclusion made based on only 18% of the docs etc., but only a fraction of the 18% was referring to the issue of ties. Thus, the conclusion was based on far less than 18% of the intel.

Was the conclusion that there was no relationship then based on
17% of the intel?
16% of the intel?
15% of the intel?
10% of the intel?
5% of the intel?!
1% of the intel?!!

Yeah, 1%....that's fine with me.
NOT!

I guess <18% is good enough for most people, but not for me.

For the lazy..no make that lackadaisical

Evaluations regarding all of those areas are clearly important but it seems the Bush Administration’s case for war and the expectations of Americans – as well as the world – would define “Saddam’s Ties to Al Qaeda” differently. The Bush Administration claimed that Saddam had WMD capability (either in stockpiles or rapid re-start “breakout capability”) and that the threat of Saddam’s regime providing WMD to al Qaeda constituted a “Nexus of Evil” scenario that was too horrific a possibility to allow indefinitely. So the question of regime ties as understood by most people is a two-fold question:

“Did Saddam have the capability to provide WMD and if so would he have provided WMD to al Qaeda?”

That is how most people view the question of Saddam’s Ties to al Qaeda. It’s how it was presented to the American people by the Administration and it’s how it should be evaluated.

The “Duelfer Report” and Dr Kay’s interim report both show that there was a WMD capability in the form of rapid restart WMD programs masked as dual use technologies (such as converting concentrated pesticides to nerve agents or chlorine production facilities to facilities that could fill the tens of thousands of empty artillery shells stored at such facilities). Post war and post ISG report findings also found WMD in various forms of degradation ranging from completely benign to still weapons grade (in fact, the Department of Defense regarded the capabilities of captured chemical weapons as dangerous enough to still classify them as weapons instead of simply hazardous materials).

"It was reasonable to conclude that Iraq posed an imminent threat. What we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war," – 1/28/04 Dr. David Kay testimony to Senate Armed Services. Committee

The answer to the first part of the Nexus of Evil scenario is, “Yes, Saddam did have the ability to give WMD to Al Qaeda.”

Would he have given WMD to al Qaeda? To that end examining the areas that the Phase I and Phase II reports is useful but the end assessment of whether or not the regime would provide WMD to al Qaeda is left unresolved and therefore the crucial question of Saddam’s Ties to al Qaeda as shown before is left unresolved – not definitively closed at all as opponents of the war and many in the mainstream media would have us believe.

In fact, while the Phase II report again says that evidence remains to be gathered and assessed regarding some of the four areas examined, it does NOT say there are no ties between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda, as the Bush Administration defined such ties or as the American people have come to understand such ties. Specifically, the issue of regime ties to al Qaeda in the 2004 Phase I report is described in the Phase II report:

“The analysis was detailed, did not make definitive statements, and left the issue open for the consumer to decide what constituted a “relationship.“‘ pg 66

While some statements may be mischaracterized as definitive, the Phase II report also does not make definitive statements for the same reason and it’s only at the end of the section on regime ties to al Qaeda that this is made clear.

Throughout the Phase II report’s “Section III. Iraqi Links to Al-Qa’ida”, there are numerous points that illustrate just how little intelligence has yet to be inexcusably collected, interpreted and assessed in this matter. According to the report, most of the assessments are not made by the intelligence community at large*, but are reports to the SSCI made by the lead DIA analyst alone, by FBI “soft” interrogations of regime detainees, and two pre-war CIA assessments that were based largely on pre-1998 intelligence.

“Most alarmingly, after 1998 and the exit of the U.N. inspectors, the CIA had no human intelligence sources inside Iraq who were collecting against the WMD target.” Senator Pat Roberts 070904 SSCI Release of Phase I Press Conference transcript.

Additionally, the Phase II report says:

“The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which is leading the exploitation effort of documents (DocEx) uncovered in Iraq, told Committee staff that 120 million plus pages of documents that were recovered in Iraq have received an initial review for intelligence information. As of January 2006, 34 million pages have been translated and summarized to some extent and are available to analysts in an Intelligence Community database.” pg 62/400

And while that might mislead people into thinking that the assessments made are full and complete, it isn’t until later in the report that a little caveat is tucked away for less-than-attentive readers to find:

“Over the past three years, the effort has secured and partially processed more than 26 million pages of documents and over ten terabytes of analog and digital media.” pg 133/400.

That means that 26,000,000 docs have been partially translated out of the 120,000,000+ that have been recovered; barely 18% have been partially translated, and we’re to believe that the claims of “No Ties” as presented by the media and opponents to the war is somehow a definitive assessment?

An investigation that claims to conclude after examining (at best) 18% of the information is not conclusive. It’s misleading.

*The Intelligence Community is currently comprised of:

The Office of the Director of Central Intelligence,
The Central Intelligence Agency,
The Defense Intelligence Agency,
The National Security Agency,
The National Reconnaissance Office,
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency,
The intelligence component of the Army
The intelligence component of the Navy
The intelligence component of the Air Force,
The intelligence component of the Marine Corps,
The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research,
The of Energy Department’s Office of Intelligence,
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Office of Intelligence and Divisions of Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence,
The Department of Homeland Security’s Directorate of Information Analysis
Infrastructure Protection as well as its Directorate of Coast Guard Intelligence,
The Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Finance Intelligence

BTTT