Getting iraq not having WMD right probably isn't that hard.
Allegedly canadian intelligence knew this, but had it all marked "for canadian eyes only" because they were worried about consequences if usa found out they weren't on board. I highly doubt canada has super-spies, the problem is usa really wanted there to be WMDs, so they came to the conclusion there was.
Sometimes I feel like I was taking crazy pills, but I distinctly remember major news agencies like the BBC calling BS with pretty hard facts about the whole WMD thing, but no one really cared. (In America or Britain anyways)
I particularly remember the mainstream media in the US cheerleading for the war and shouting down anybody who raised doubts as being "with the terrorists". The truth is that the intelligence never mattered, it was always meant as an act of revenge against the Arab/Muslim world for 9/11 and a settling of scores from the 90s Gulf War.
I remember when the US invaded Iraq(II) it was treated like a party. The media loved it, it was like a football game. And when out to eat, I saw a lot of Americans were loving it , it was entertainment. Shock and Awe, it was spectacle.
I remember reading reports by a German UN weapons inspector. The CIA gave them a few of their bests leads but every time the inspectors went there they found nothing or equipment that hadn't been used in years. The CIA's response was to cut them off completely. The US clearly wanted to go to war no matter what. The WMDs were just cover.
Yes - back when the US was threatening war, Iraq let in UN weapons inspectors, who would of course have gladly inspected anywhere the US/UK said the weapons were.
Everyone following the news knew at the time the US & UK couldn't direct the inspectors to the WMDs, because no WMDs existed.
> In 2002, it happened again. The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the rest of the intelligence community had concluded that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was trying to build nuclear weapons
This from the article is false. The CIA never concluded that Iraq had a nuclear program.
In fact, the CIA was ignored when they refuted the politician's claims about the nuclear program.
True, I think every neutral party at the time knew that Iraq had no WMDs, crazy how just cause might is right we have let the instigators of Iraq war get away with it while they end up destabilizing a whole region
i recall GWB speech in UN on this. Literally everybody called BS on this, it was glaringly obvious. Then nations leaned on each side if they simply wanted war to happen (and subsequent contracts from all the change and damage) or not. It wasnt a stellar day for US, and history showed why.
Maybe it’s because “nobody’s heard of them” and “nobody listens to them” that they are allowed to come to correct conclusions?
Maybe if they were as influential as the CIA they would get a ton of political pressure to throw out their analysis and echo the current administration’s foregone conclusions?
This is an interesting take, that I think might hold some water. With a budget of $59 million (according to wikipedia), they are definitely a small entity in the grand scheme of the US Government. Big enough to run their reports, but not big enough to stop them from being ignored if they are the only (or one of the few) going against the popular consensus.
Also, while I am not anywhere familiar with them enough to know their overall track record, even if they did correctly predict the topics listed in the article 'correct', that is three items in 60 years? I'd be curious to know how their intelligence has compared with the numerous things inbetween. That would be a huge lift though.
Still fun/interesting to learn about these agencies, even as someone who grew up in the US and took higher level classes on US Government, you never really get a complete view everything.
> The most important factor in building this culture, every veteran I spoke to stated, is the unusual way that INR selects and uses analysts. The CIA and DIA tend to favor generalists. Analysts rotate between roles every two to three years, often changing countries or even regions. At INR, the average analyst has been on their topic for over 14 years. “At most of the other intel organizations you rotate out of your portfolio every two to three years,” McCarthy says. “At INR, they die at their desks.”
You know they'll take the "die at their desks" part out of context. And not absorb the fundamentally unpalatable truth that expertise is real but specific.
It's not that nobody listens, it's that the information disseminated via the media is not what's correct, but rather what is politically expedient at the moment.
Case in point: where in the article is the INR's brilliant prediction about the future of the war in Ukraine?
Their production is not public. All links in the article to past production actually go to third-party papers analyzing their historic, declassified production.
TBH the article makes it clear they are not perfect, by mentioning that they got Iran badly wrong.
Iraq was pretty easy to call. I got it largely right as a high schooler at the time it started. One thing that threw me was that we stayed so damn long, which put my “cross-border islamist group destabilizes Syria” prediction off by years. I underestimated our stomach for throwing money and lives away I guess.
The "cross-border islamist group destabilizing Syria" were spawned from Obama's "moderate rebels" who were extensively sponsored with weaponry to fight against Assad. They carried those American weapons into the invasion of Mosul because they kept failing against the battle-hardened Syrian armed forces and Iraq was a far softer target at the time.
Not sure this could have been predicted from the Iraq war though unless you are talking about the general prediction that any rebel group that the U.S. sponsors turns into a terrorist group that the U.S. bombs within a decade. Its kinda of funny when you compare news articles across years.
When thinking about this it's very important to recognize what this means exactly. The money is not put on a pile and set on fire. It goes somewhere where it has very significant impact, most likely flowing into military-industrial complex which is a huge chunk of domestic economy.
A bunch was deficit spending straight into corporate profits, so, inflationary hand-outs to the rich (and a bit to 401ks probably). Also, though far from a majority of the spending, we did ship whole pallets of cash and those just kinda vanished to wherever but I’m pretty sure if they made it back state-side it was a similar deal, deficit spending going more or less directly to someone already rich in return for very little. A quick google yeah about $12B of cash with awful accounting, and that’s just Iraq, same thing happened in Afghanistan.
In a small way, it kind of was. We used the money to produce weapons and ammunition. The producers took the cash and provided the arms. In an ideal economy, both sides would have a net gain: the producers reap profits, and the military uses the goods for a goal it (supposedly) believes is more valuable than the money spent.
But we shot the ammo, used the rifles, and detonated the bombs. And the USA didn't achieve the valuable goals it promised. So, while the arms manufacturers came out ahead, the military was left with little value. If they had put that money into research or upgrading bases overseas, then there'd be civilian profits and nice things the military could use for years.
What I gathered from this is that not the INR is full of oracles or people who have the magic skill to foresee the future but rather really smart people who based on past experience can see patterns of behavior and infer future state from that. Then, they are so small they are required to innovate and iterate on intelligence.
For sources with similar protocols/track record that you can actually see the work of, I'd look at people like Sarah Kendzior and Cory Doctorow. One focuses on how corruption and autocratic rule become entrenched in a society, the other on tech issues, with an emphasis on corporate malfeasance wrt user freedom and safety. Both are a bit melodramatic, but they also both emphasize that their predictions are based in, as you say, inferring future state from patterns of past behavior.
There's two classified versions and only one will get revealed once that situation is resolved. The version which would have gotten it wrong will just get burried to protect the agency's reputation...
INR was also the source of the concentration camp ("strategic hamlet") strategy in South Vietnam.
> The INR director saw the counterinsurgency effort's emphasis on military security as insufficient. Hilsman was much more receptive to ideas for population resettlement and control along lines advanced by Robert G. Thompson, a British consultant to the Diem government, and adopted them as his own. Kennedy asked Hilsman to prepare a paper showing how this concept could work.
Readit News
Allegedly canadian intelligence knew this, but had it all marked "for canadian eyes only" because they were worried about consequences if usa found out they weren't on board. I highly doubt canada has super-spies, the problem is usa really wanted there to be WMDs, so they came to the conclusion there was.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-intelligence-asses...
Everyone following the news knew at the time the US & UK couldn't direct the inspectors to the WMDs, because no WMDs existed.
This from the article is false. The CIA never concluded that Iraq had a nuclear program.
In fact, the CIA was ignored when they refuted the politician's claims about the nuclear program.
It appears as though several countries were happily selling Iraq WMD components and materials. Including the US.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
Maybe if they were as influential as the CIA they would get a ton of political pressure to throw out their analysis and echo the current administration’s foregone conclusions?
Also, while I am not anywhere familiar with them enough to know their overall track record, even if they did correctly predict the topics listed in the article 'correct', that is three items in 60 years? I'd be curious to know how their intelligence has compared with the numerous things inbetween. That would be a huge lift though.
Still fun/interesting to learn about these agencies, even as someone who grew up in the US and took higher level classes on US Government, you never really get a complete view everything.
Deleted Comment
That seems like lesson MBAs should take to heart.
Case in point: where in the article is the INR's brilliant prediction about the future of the war in Ukraine?
TBH the article makes it clear they are not perfect, by mentioning that they got Iran badly wrong.
Maybe the INR doesn't reveal predictions of that nature to the public or media?
Not sure this could have been predicted from the Iraq war though unless you are talking about the general prediction that any rebel group that the U.S. sponsors turns into a terrorist group that the U.S. bombs within a decade. Its kinda of funny when you compare news articles across years.
When thinking about this it's very important to recognize what this means exactly. The money is not put on a pile and set on fire. It goes somewhere where it has very significant impact, most likely flowing into military-industrial complex which is a huge chunk of domestic economy.
In a small way, it kind of was. We used the money to produce weapons and ammunition. The producers took the cash and provided the arms. In an ideal economy, both sides would have a net gain: the producers reap profits, and the military uses the goods for a goal it (supposedly) believes is more valuable than the money spent.
But we shot the ammo, used the rifles, and detonated the bombs. And the USA didn't achieve the valuable goals it promised. So, while the arms manufacturers came out ahead, the military was left with little value. If they had put that money into research or upgrading bases overseas, then there'd be civilian profits and nice things the military could use for years.
> The INR director saw the counterinsurgency effort's emphasis on military security as insufficient. Hilsman was much more receptive to ideas for population resettlement and control along lines advanced by Robert G. Thompson, a British consultant to the Diem government, and adopted them as his own. Kennedy asked Hilsman to prepare a paper showing how this concept could work.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB121/prados.htm