Military deception and propaganda

I was just over at Col. Pat Lang's site and his latest post is sure to be controversial. In response to the recent truck-bombing which MNF-I says was a special groups operation, Col. Lang says this:

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In recent years the idea of lying to gain a propaganda advantage has become a popular concept among some people in the US armed forces. That is a bad idea for many reasons. To begin with lying is, in itself, a bad idea. Abandonment of the truth is a corrupting and corrosive concept, a step on a path that leads to an inability to believe the statements of one's own people even within the armed forces. Armies operate on a belief in the integrity of comrades. Without that, only a fool will accept the risks involved in trusting the guidance given by one's superiors. There are other reasons. In the end the truth will normally become evident and when it does, the trust necessary to maintain the support of one's own public for a war effort is destroyed. How foolish it is to risk that.

Nevertheless, our neocon Jacobin "friends" love the idea of deception and manipulation and their influence on the armed forces expressed through the civilian government has corrupted the basic belief in truthfulness as the best policy. Unfortunately, it is now plausible that the claim of Iranian responsibility for this attack on a predominately Shia market place in Baghdad may be a crude lie intended to support a propaganda campaign. Is the claim of Iranian responsibility true? Unfortunately, the "coin" of credibility has been spent to such an extent that the claim itself can not be believed without real proof.

Has the US government ever sought to manipulate opinion by deliberately using half truths or whole untruths? Yes, it has, but the targets have by law been limited to foreign populations. The danger inherent in doing such a thing has always been reflected in US public law. We need to return to this policy.

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Frankly, I'm not sure what to make of this. I agree with him on the problems with lying and deception, but at the unit level where I work I haven't seen what he's suggesting. Thoughts?

His last paragraph has some big-picture implications. In a world where media is ubiquitous and global, is it even possible to manipulate opinion abroad without doing so at home as well?

I visit his site occasionally, usually good for a chuckle and little more IMO.

Does he have a valid point in his question? Sure, deception or untruth is always a possibility -- and not only for propaganda purposes, which someone with his alleged background should know -- it's also possible that it is correct. Which he should also know. However, he elects to spin it. Which is why he's good for an occasional chuckle.

IOW, he knows no more than you or I but attempts to politicize an event by suggesting evil intent. That isn't professional, it's political. :rolleyes:

He obviously isn't as old as he looks or he'd recall that in every war I can think of the US Government has tried to spin and propagandize, laws or no laws. This (LINK) is only one of the more successful examples. Bureaucracies tend to be self protective. That's far older than he or I and will still be around when our Great Grandkids are adults...

How does he have any idea whether the government is lying about this or not? The fact that he offers no proof to counter the government's claim other than pointing out that a bombing in that neighborhood some time in the past was done by Sunnis. He should probably shore up his own credibility before launching on a rant about the untruthfulness of others.

Reports 1 and 2 on understanding propoganda....some good stuff in here.


Report 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XULk...aynext_from=RL

Report 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H12Cnw6cMAo

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Originally Posted by Entropy

In a world where media is ubiquitous and global, is it even possible to manipulate opinion abroad without doing so at home as well?

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No.

And at some point there will be claims that something demonstrably "wrong" (and arguably a "lie") in a foreign media account was in fact a diabolical attempt to circumscribe the law.

Factor in paraphrasing, misquotes, and interpretation issues and the possibilities are endless.

Propaganda reaches into the realm of psychology. You would be surprised what's possible. Some points resonate a lot in place a while you can tell the exact opposite in place b with the same success - without getting into trouble.

Politicians do it all the time. Listen to a politician in a college speech and next day in a retirement home...


The whole thing isn't completely covered by science yet, so there's still some art involved. Imagine Rove/Cheney had applied their liar talents for useful purposes...

A small (sadly kinda mediocre) teaser on the topic:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/213625?from=rss

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

The whole thing isn't completely covered by science yet, so there's still some art involved. Imagine Rove/Cheney had applied their liar talents for useful purposes...

A small (sadly kinda mediocre) teaser on the topic:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/213625?from=rss

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In both the Bush/Cheney thing and in Health Care the issues that most people refer to as being "lies" are actually projections into the future (or the present, in the case of intelligence), and not statements of fact. In otherwords, people took the information that they had, and rightly or wrongly extrapolated a conclusion from it. In the Bush/Cheney case it was the conclusion based upon limited (and apparently incorrect) intelligence, that Saddam Hussein was attempting to rebuild his WMD program. In the Health Care (the link Fuch's gives) it is, among other things, the "Death Panels" which was a dramatic name Sarah Palin gave for the government boards that she extrapolated from the incentive structure created by one of the Health care proposals.

However, strictly speaking, neither of those qualify as lies, because they were not falsifiable to the person who was saying them. Indeed, the better response to those who disagree is to show the error of their reasoning, but unfortunately in todays media, the common response is to yell "lies" and whoever is louder wins.

This, however, is an illustration of how good propoganda, which both examples above clearly are, works. Propoganda, done correctly, is not the telling of lies, but the telling of truths in such a way that allows others to extrapolate their own conclusions in a way desirable to the propogator. So for example when Al Qaeda talks about Guantanamo, it is not that they want people all over the world to care about injustice, but they want Muslims to believe that America is coming for them, too. Unfortunately, we in the west seem to have lost all sense of subtlety, which is a key factor in truly good propoganda.

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Originally Posted by Abu Suleyman

In both the Bush/Cheney thing and in Health Care the issues that most people refer to as being "lies" are actually projections into the future (or the present, in the case of intelligence), and not statements of fact. In otherwords, people took the information that they had, and rightly or wrongly extrapolated a conclusion from it.

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"Office of the Press Secretary
August 26, 2002

Vice President Speaks at VFW 103rd National Convention
Remarks by the Vice President to the Veterans of Foreign Wars 103rd National Convention "

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(...) Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors -- confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth.(...)

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http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archiv.../20020826.html

Cheney is a liar, period. His statements were beyond interpretation.

I know that those people try to re-write history, to cover up their misconduct. It's typical after gross failure. That should not be allowed to happen.

You forget that in 2002 there was no doubt on anyone's side. Not one intelligence agency in the entire world doubted the existence of WMD in Iraq. The argument in 2002 was never about whether Saddam had and was developing weapons, it was whether we should invade or not.

The best proof of his having weapons was the fact that he acted exactly as we would have expected if he had weapons. Indeed he did have 500 metric tons of non-weaponized Uranium. But the problem was that Saddam decieved us. While Vice-President Cheney has plenty of problems to criticize him over, he is no more of a liar than someone who is fooled by a magician into thinking there is a coin in his hand.

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Originally Posted by Abu Suleyman

You forget that in 2002 there was no doubt on anyone's side. Not one intelligence agency in the entire world doubted the existence of WMD in Iraq. The argument in 2002 was never about whether Saddam had and was developing weapons, it was whether we should invade or not.

The best proof of his having weapons was the fact that he acted exactly as we would have expected if he had weapons. Indeed he did have 500 metric tons of non-weaponized Uranium. But the problem was that Saddam decieved us. While Vice-President Cheney has plenty of problems to criticize him over, he is no more of a liar than someone who is fooled by a magician into thinking there is a coin in his hand.

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Sorry, but you merely missed all those doubts that persisted around the world.
The U.S. intelligence services were quite reluctant and careful as well.

Besides; your "best proof" is no proof at all - it's at best a weak indication.

A full discussion of Cheney would take weeks, but this is obvious to me and I fail to understand how you can disagree (albeit I've read a lot about psychological explanations for such behaviour, like cognitive dissonance):

Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rove and others wanted war with Iraq for stupid reasons, they (especially the smarter ones; Cheney and Rove) manipulated and manipulated in order to get support (thereby ruining the reality-based intelligence services into mere servants). They had no good evidence at all, used their pre-conceived conclusions and lied to the world.
There were dozens of well-documented and proved lies.

The Iraq war was based on a house of lies built by the U.S. government at the highest levels.

I understand it's hard to accept if you suddenly find yourself on the team that turned out to 'not have been the good guys'.
Most people turn to a tunnel vision and ignore all conflicting evidence once they find themselves in such a situation.
Psychologists have done studies that show a huge percentage of people cannot change their mind that late even if faced with perfect evidence of their error. It's almost unbelievable how tricky the human mind is.

Nevertheless, the sh** has already hit the fan, now it's time to draw lessons, to improve the understanding of other nations/people who have been, are or will be in similar situations (Serbs, for example - or even "reconcilable" Taleban) and to watch out that the real history will be remembered, not a spin doctor version.


A bit back2topic; re-writing history is also an important part of propaganda. It's also a very powerful thing, if you've got the right levers.

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

A bit back2topic; re-writing history is also an important part of propaganda. It's also a very powerful thing, if you've got the right levers.

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Lot of it going about...:rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Abu Suleyman

You forget that in 2002 there was no doubt on anyone's side. Not one intelligence agency in the entire world doubted the existence of WMD in Iraq. The argument in 2002 was never about whether Saddam had and was developing weapons, it was whether we should invade or not.

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It is certainly the case that the western intelligence community was agreed that Saddam had some chemical weapon capacity. Indeed, even some of the Iraqi regime seem to have thought they had CW, and were surprised to find out after the war that they did not.

On the other hand, there was substantial disagreement, to some extent within the US intelligence community, and even more so between the US and its allies, as to:

• How much CW capacity Iraq might have.
• Whether that CW capacity was particularly dangerous.
• Whether Iraq had any significant biological weapons capacity.
• Whether Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.

On these issues, many non-US intelligence services were much closer to the mark than was Washington. Part of the reason for that was an absence of political pressure to cherry-pick the data, but it was far from the only reason.

I wouldn't underestimate the extent to which Bush, Cheney, et al believed in what they were saying. Intelligence information is often inherently ambiguous, and its all too easy to take a fragment and use it to buttress your preconceived viewpoint.

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

Sorry, but you merely missed all those doubts that persisted around the world.
The U.S. intelligence services were quite reluctant and careful as well.

Besides; your "best proof" is no proof at all - it's at best a weak indication.

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To true on that one, of course there may have been the little fact so ?how? many of those disagreeing had a (hmmm, for lack of a better term)Vested interest in us not going in.

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

A bit back2topic; re-writing history is also an important part of propaganda. It's also a very powerful thing, if you've got the right levers.

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It is an amazing thing, tain't it:wry:

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Originally Posted by Abu Suleyman

You forget that in 2002 there was no doubt on anyone's side. Not one intelligence agency in the entire world doubted the existence of WMD in Iraq. The argument in 2002 was never about whether Saddam had and was developing weapons, it was whether we should invade or not.

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One of the biggest fallacies of modern times is that Saddam "had no WMD" in 2003. Fact: He had all the expertise. He had all the facilities, and he had all the resources. The fact that we found no barrels of VX is utterly irrelevant, except that it was a political disaster and the White House was utterly inept at explaining the reality.

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Originally Posted by William F. Owen

...The fact that we found no barrels of VX is utterly irrelevant, except that it was a political disaster and the White House was utterly inept at explaining the reality.

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Both points. The Bush White house did the poorest job PR of any in my memory. That's goes back a way... :wry:

Politicians say dumb and specious things constantly, trying to shade reality to justify everything they want to do be it a war or health care. I've never known of one in recent times who wasn't prone to do so. American politicians are worse than most, perhaps because they get more TV coverage... :rolleyes:

Are we really going to rehash the WMD arguments again? Is there a point? Bush and Chaney are out of office now. These arguments never get anywhere and unless I am totally mistaken there has been no new information on the topic in quite some time. At this point no one is going to change anyone's mind on the subject and arguing about it just doesn't make sense.

SFC W

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Originally Posted by Rex Brynen

Indeed, even some of the Iraqi regime seem to have thought they had CW, and were surprised to find out after the war that they did not.

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I remember reading that report as well, and noting that same point. I also wondered why, If Saddam really had no CW capacity, he didn't simply pull the rug out from under the invasion preparations by opening the door to international inspections. One possibility I though worth considering is that Saddam saw the belief in WMD as a deterrent, not against foreign attack but against a possible coup.

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Originally Posted by Uboat509

Are we really going to rehash the WMD arguments again? Is there a point? Bush and Chaney are out of office now. These arguments never get anywhere and unless I am totally mistaken there has been no new information on the topic in quite some time. At this point no one is going to change anyone's mind on the subject and arguing about it just doesn't make sense.

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Not arguing. I am merely stating it as an object lesson in how essentially correct information, that supports a policy, is grossly and ineptly handled, to the extent it casts doubt on the usefulness of information ops, propaganda and deception.

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Originally Posted by Dayuhan

I remember reading that report as well, and noting that same point. I also wondered why, If Saddam really had no CW capacity, he didn't simply pull the rug out from under the invasion preparations by opening the door to international inspections. One possibility I though worth considering is that Saddam saw the belief in WMD as a deterrent, not against foreign attack but against a possible coup.

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Saddam made a calculation early on - he would would work to prevent any possibility of the UN/US finding a "smoking gun" to restart a war while at the same time maintaining an illusion he still had WMD.

The "maintaining an illusion" wasn't really done by Saddam.

My initial point was that Cheney/Rove had/have immense manipulation talents and imagine what could have been achieved if they had used it for a good purpose instead of for wrong fixed ideas.

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Imagine Rove/Cheney had applied their liar talents for useful purposes...

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Such talents are rare in very high level positions, even though many political systems breed such people.


Another example: Imagine Goebbels as a proponent of environmental policies. The Dalai Lama is a huge PR talent as well, he even sticks to his strategy for decades. Mandela and Ghandhi were also great, as were Péron, Castro and the early Mao.
Chavéz is apparently a gifted demagogue as well.

Effective political (and to some even military) propaganda requires not only plans, analysis, doctrines - it's first and foremost about people. The same applies to political deception (military deception is rarely person-centric).

Maybe a staff of psychologists and political scientists may develop a super-effective propaganda and deception campaign based on doctrine, planning and science, but I assume that a single talent could do it better. It's still quiet much an art.

Bush/Cheney were wrong, and they did make huge mistakes in their understandings of the situation. Nevertheless, being wrong is not a lie. A lie is telling someone something you know to be wrong. In order for it to be a lie we would have to have evidence that they believed that Saddam had no WMD, but clearly the believed that he did: ergo they were wrong, not liars. I understand that it is politically expedient to portray all mistakes as lies, because people who are just wrong might be right about something else, but you can completely write off liars.

Back to my original point though, which is that it is better to use facts and shape discussion in your favor as part of a media campaign than it is to lie.0 Bush/Cheney actually did just that, not making things up, but using the information available to the IC to shape discussion such that in America the question was how to stop Saddam, not if he needed to be stopped.

I suspect that the reason that the Bush team went from so easily being able to control the debate to losing control so rapidly was that they bought absolutely into things we now know to be false. They really believed that we would be quickly proven right, Iraqi's would rise up to greet us in joyous throngs, and Iraq would settle into town hall meetings and happy electoral democracy about a week or two after the invasion. A willing dupe is actually much more dangerous in my view than a cunning liar who can always manipulate you. At least that way, we arrive at someones destination instead heaven only knows where.

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Originally Posted by Abu Suleyman

Nevertheless, being wrong is not a lie. A lie is telling someone something you know to be wrong. In order for it to be a lie we would have to have evidence that they believed that Saddam had no WMD, but clearly the believed that he did: ergo they were wrong, not liars.

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Wikipedia:

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A lie (also called prevarication), is a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement, especially with the intention to deceive others, often with the further intention to maintain a secret or reputation, protect someone's feelings or to avoid a punishment. To lie is to state something that one knows to be false or that one has not reasonably ascertained to be true with the intention that it be taken for the truth by oneself or someone else. A liar is a person who is lying, who has previously lied, or who tends by nature to lie repeatedly.

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They had a fixed idea. To assert that one's fixed idea is a fact is lying as long as you don't have enough evidence.
They had none, for there was none. They used lots of false evidence that needed to be dropped even before the war began because it was the result of at best sloppy work.

They ignored selectively mountains of evidence that was contrary to their fixed idea (like huge documentation of the U.-N. inspectors - some of them working for the CIA - who found next to nothing for the last seven years). They dropped common sense overboard and they manipulated the intelligence services into looking in one direction only.

There was no way to be reasonably "beyond doubt", and it was quite obvious from a distant and neutral point of view that they were pulling assertions out of their a**es.

They were and are liars and manipulators.
Whenever they complain that I insult them while writing this; let them come, let them call me to a German court. Their case would be dismissed immediately as obvious nonsense, that's for sure.


I'm sorry that you went back to this, as it's quite obvious that none of us is going to be convinced by the other one, and the thread was already back to topic/title.

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

Wikipedia:


They had a fixed idea. To assert that one's fixed idea is a fact is lying as long as you don't have enough evidence.

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Is Wikipedia authoritative now? :rolleyes:

So who gets to say what enough evidence is? Following this definition Aristotle was a liar because he war wrong about there only being four elements! He looked at the evidence he saw, came out with an assertion and taught it as truth. He could have done any of the tests that were later done to prove that there were multiple elements, but he chose not to.

In the end, there was a lot of indication that Saddam had WMD, as stated above even some of Saddam's own thought they did. So it is not as though this wasn't something that was WIDELY believed. But if we flip this around and rolled into Iraq and found WMD, then would you be a liar, or everyone who asserted to that Iraq didn't have WMD? Saddam would, because he would have known better. Everyone else would have just been wrong.

This is no trivial item, and I will fight this tooth and nail because calling people liars who act on intelligence and get it wrong is a very bad precedent. There is always conflicting information, and it is always a guessing game. If you try and turn intelligence analysts who are wrong from merely being in error, into morally reprehensible evil creatures, you set up an incentive system whereby no one will ever be willing to make any assertions. There is no such thing as 100%, and I fault the Bush administration for passing things off as being 100% for political reasons, but going with your best estimate is what you have to do, and sometimes you are wrong. That doesn't make you a liar, though.

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Originally Posted by Abu Suleyman

So it is not as though this wasn't something that was WIDELY believed.

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We agree enough ("widely believed" is obviously not the same as "no doubt") that we can narrow the difference down to the definition of a "lie".*


Let's summon our armies.

wikipedia.com: see above

dictionary. com
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lie?jss=0

Merriam-Webster
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lie%5B4%5D



Besides; you got it all wrong. Cheney did not act on intelligence. He made intelligence act on his fixed idea to get some talking points to hammer into the citizens in order to make his stupid ME adventure fantasy feasible.


*: In fact, I could simply proceed to another Cheney quote or to intelligence briefs known to Cheney that were not beyond doubt at all to make my point. Reality has has a strong bias that this whole discussion is really rigged in my favour.

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

Besides; you got it all wrong. Cheney did not act on intelligence. He made intelligence act on his fixed idea to get some talking points to hammer into the citizens in order to make his stupid ME adventure fantasy feasible.

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Do you know this or is that what many sources you have seen say they think they know?

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*: In fact, I could simply proceed to another Cheney quote or to intelligence briefs known to Cheney that were not beyond doubt at all to make my point. Reality has has a strong bias that this whole discussion is really rigged in my favour.

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Let me be sure I understand this discussion. The question is whether a politician tried to influence policy and decisions, possibly shaded the truth and /or lied outright in the process of doing so. Is that correct?

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Originally Posted by Ken White

Do you know this or is that what many sources you have seen say they think they know?

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In a complex world like ours, I surrender to the dominant uncertainty by valueing overwhelming information as reliable.


Ken, this is the second time today that someone tried to apply way too high standards on me. Life isn't perfect, people aren't perfect, we live with limitations and it's useless and wrong to apply the highest imaginable, yet impossible standards.
I have read and heard dozens if not hundreds of sources about the lies we're discussing about in the last few years. The arguments and evidence is overwhelming, and although that still doesn't give me the same degree of certainty about it as to god, it should nevertheless count.

Honestly, I think it's a rather poor rhetoric trick to selectively apply extreme scrutiny on (possibly unsympathetic) opinions.
There could be no useful discussion if every opinion or argument was questioned like

"Do you know this or is that what many sources you have seen say they think they know?"

That's not how a discussion works - that's how to (attempt to) kill a discussion.

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

Ken, this is the second time today that someone tried to apply way too high standards on me. Life isn't perfect, people aren't perfect, we live with limitations and it's useless and wrong to apply the highest imaginable, yet impossible standards.

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This is precisely the point I am getting at. People are not perfect, and Dick Cheney and George Bush were wrong about Iraq. Isn't that enough? Why do we have to try and make them liars as well? When did being a colossal foreign policy failure cease to be sufficient rebuke, and we have to turn people into demons in the night?

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I have read and heard dozens if not hundreds of sources about the lies we're discussing about in the last few years. The arguments and evidence is overwhelming, and although that still doesn't give me the same degree of certainty about it as to god, it should nevertheless count.

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This is also the point I am trying to get at. These are all things that have come out in the last few years, after and in large part because of the invasion of Iraq. The Bush administration sincerely believed that Saddam was a threat, and they saw every indication supporting that fact as in their favor, and to their ultimate shame failed to recognize the contrary indicators. Nevertheless, based only on the information available at the time specifically including expelling inspectors, surreptitious movements around known former chemical weapons sites, and a lengthy past history of WMD programs, it was not unreasonable to conclude that Saddam was in the process of getting WMD. There was no intent to deceive.

Nobody, or at least not me, is arguing they weren't wrong. I am not attempting to rewrite history. Unless some secret lab is discovered somewhere in Anbar or something, the facts are the facts. However, the facts clearly show that Cheney not only believed that Saddam was developing weapons and was a threat, but possibly to this day believes it. That makes him delusional but not a liar.

I understand the desire to make this whole thing out to be an issue of the 'evil man behind the throne' so that it is not likely to repeat itself, at least not unless another evil person takes power. The truth, and the true lesson is that people get fooled. We got fooled, and we may get fooled again, and there is no way to stop it, other than being vigilant.

if you have knowledge or well founded suspicions; if you know that raw evil was perpetrated or or a callous disregard for facts was shown; if erroneous statement were due to sincere but wrong belief or willful dissimulation led to events. There are differences in those things...

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

In a complex world like ours, I surrender to the dominant uncertainty by valueing overwhelming information as reliable...I have read and heard dozens if not hundreds of sources about the lies we're discussing about in the last few years. The arguments and evidence is overwhelming, and although that still doesn't give me the same degree of certainty about it as to god, it should nevertheless count.

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No. it tells me you have your mind made up based on the 'evidence' you have seen. Which we both know is correct and is certainly acceptable. What we also know is that evidence is largely from the media who had an agenda that coincides with what you wish to believe. Nothing at all wrong with any of that; you're Eurocentric and the US does things that adversely affect Europe.

That's fine -- doesn't change the fact that none of us can get inside anyone's mind and say emphatically that they thought thus and such. You can say it appear s that X did so and so, you can't say flatly that X did so and so unless you were directly and personally involved.

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That's not how a discussion works - that's how to (attempt to) kill a discussion.

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No, discussion works when two people with opposing views differ but still respect each others position -- it get's killed when people, based on their beliefs and perceptions start using worlds that are inflammatory and insisting that only their 'facts' are valid. That's rarely very beneficial.

In any event, concentrating on my question about knowing this, you missed the important part of my post: ""Let me be sure I understand this discussion. The question is whether a politician tried to influence policy and decisions, possibly shaded the truth and /or lied outright in the process of doing so. Is that correct?""

IOW, this is sort of a silly discussion that lends nothing to anyone or anything. As you said:

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I'm sorry that you went back to this, as it's quite obvious that none of us is going to be convinced by the other one, and the thread was already back to topic/title.

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good idea but let me point out that you led the thread off into a pointless discussion -- as UBoat said -- when you chimed in six days ago with this:

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The whole thing isn't completely covered by science yet, so there's still some art involved. Imagine Rove/Cheney had applied their liar talents for useful purposes...

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That gratuitous, off topic and really pointless dig of a comment led to where the thread is now.

My perception, rightly or wrongly is that you have chosen to accept all the antieverything propaganda relative to Bush et.al. and the various wars. Your prerogative, certainly -- but you shouldn't object to being called on it.

Mind If i ask a simple question-
With of course the prerequisite lead in;)

Common knowledge check-

Saddam attacked Kuwait, we attacked him, In Iraq many tried to stand up and over turn him.

So thinking they might do it again doesn't seem that far from being something which was believable. Problem is when they tried to overthrow him he gas the crap out of them. Mass destruction 150000+ or something like that.

So UN inspectors spend years running around there and being run in circles but never saw anything(remember the circles;))

He threatens to have bad stuff, he'd used bad stuff, Far as I remember can't recall anyone ever saying they saw him dispose of it all.

So here come OIF we go in , years later nobody finds any well didn't have it
Huh

Last check I remember at least three or four newspaper articles about stuff from Iraq that they are just now finding in all sorts of places(other countries)

Aw heck Fuch's I suppose ur right can't see why something like that that maybe somewhere else wouldn't have shown up by now.
Why would anyone want to hide it :D

Just a different perspective I guess, Lucky thing is we all get to have them
Perspectives that is

Fuchs,

I read most of the US intel on Iraqi WMD from the mid 1990's until a year or two before OIF. I was pretty convinced Iraq had chemical weapons. Everyone I knew who studied the issue in any detail were convinced. The previous administration (ie. Pres. Clinton) was convinced. Their statements on the matter are public record should one care to look. We all got that wrong and there are a variety of reasons for that which I won't belabor here, but we were not liars.

The evidence was less certain for bio weapons and much less certain for the nuclear program. This is where I think the claims of some (notably the VP) stretched the truth. Whether he really believed in what he was saying on those aspects or whether he intentionally lied or distorted is not something anyone can answer for certain. I've seen decisionmakers "drink the koolaid" many times and believe what they want to believe, considering only the evidence that supports their case (for the worst case I've read about, see Dough Feith). That is human nature and policymakers are especially prone to such behavior. Alternatively, he certainly could have intentionally lied. Only former VP Cheney knows for sure, so I view claims of certainty about individual intent with a lot of skepticism.

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Originally Posted by Ron Humphrey

So UN inspectors spend years running around there and being run in circles but never saw anything(remember the circles;))

He threatens to have bad stuff, he'd used bad stuff, Far as I remember can't recall anyone ever saying they saw him dispose of it all.

So here come OIF we go in , years later nobody finds any well didn't have it

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Completely wrong.- The inspectors found huge stockpiles (chemical weapons, missiles, other stuff) and arranged the destruction. They reported that pretty much nothing was missing in 1996 (the missing inventory was well in the realm of decay and usual unexplained loss of military equipment).

I don't recall threats "to have bad stuff" by Saddam post-'92 and certainly not post-'96. Instead, Iraq told the world it has nothing left, which was impossible to prove by definition.

The "Iraq has WMD" or "Iraq has chemical weapons" thing was entirely a fantasy.

This discussion really fits much better into a "deception and propaganda" topic than I thought at first.

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Originally Posted by Entropy

The evidence was less certain for bio weapons and much less certain for the nuclear program. This is where I think the claims of some (notably the VP) stretched the truth.

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Except that there was no evidence on chemical weapons, for there were none. There were only fantasy and assertions plus a large pile of disproved evidence.

The CIA sent the inspectors around based on such assertions and they never found anything post-'96. There was a six-year track record of exclusively disproved assertions before the invasion.

The U.S. had set the requirement for hard evidence way too low. There wasn't enough evidence to stand up in a civil court case, but you guys went into a war of aggression over it. Don't be surprised that your reputation suffered.


It's astonishing how difficult it is to admit mistake and lying or officials.
Being fooled; well, shame on you. Yet, the government at secretary and VP level wasn't fooled. They fooled others based on their inexcusable fixed ideas.

The U.S. will have a tough time recovering from the loss of respect and reputation that occurred in the GWB years f it's unable to admit failure and point fingers at the guilty ones (let alone send them to jail for causing the death and mutilation of ten thousands, including thousands of own citizens).

The Japanese were that stubborn after WW2 and have still trouble with the Chinese and Koreans because of it.

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Originally Posted by Entropy

I read most of the US intel on Iraqi WMD from the mid 1990's until a year or two before OIF. I was pretty convinced Iraq had chemical weapons. Everyone I knew who studied the issue in any detail were convinced. The previous administration (ie. Pres. Clinton) was convinced. Their statements on the matter are public record should one care to look. We all got that wrong and there are a variety of reasons for that which I won't belabor here, but we were not liars.

The evidence was less certain for bio weapons and much less certain for the nuclear program. This is where I think the claims of some (notably the VP) stretched the truth. Whether he really believed in what he was saying on those aspects or whether he intentionally lied or distorted is not something anyone can answer for certain. I've seen decisionmakers "drink the koolaid" many times and believe what they want to believe, considering only the evidence that supports their case (for the worst case I've read about, see Dough Feith). That is human nature and policymakers are especially prone to such behavior. Alternatively, he certainly could have intentionally lied. Only former VP Cheney knows for sure, so I view claims of certainty about individual intent with a lot of skepticism.

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What Entropy said.

Just to reiterate: it was not just the US that believed Saddam had CW capability. Everyone did, including European intelligence services.

The debates were over how much, whether it had any strategic significance, and whether there was also a nuclear and BW program. Here, many US allies departed from US assessments by concluding not much/not really/no/probably not.

Well, the question is in part about whether European Intelligence services were collectors or consumers of information.

The found no real evidence, so they gulped the selective, filtered reports they received from the U.S. and UK.

Germany, for example, had neither serious interest nor much espionage capacity in Iraq. The BND was known to be leaning to believe the U.S. assertions, while most of the nation was not convinced.

The line was drawn not between informed and uninformed (as actually the intelligence services were NOT better informed than a normal citizen who read a newspaper records about the finished destruction of Iraqi WMD/missile inventories) ), but between those gullible enough to be convinced by so-called "evidence" that was essentially just made-up assertions (like the illusion of trailer bio weapon labs that wasn't more than a single unreliable report plus lots of virtual reality stuff) and those who still remembered what actual evidence looks like and were able to discern assertions from evidence.


The so-called evidence was fabricated, it was fabricated in order to meet the expectations of politicians who in turn used these fabrications to lie the public into a war.

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Let's try this logical route:

(1) There were no NBC weapons or weapons programs in Iraq.

(2) Therefore, there was no reliable evidence possible about such, instead there was at best a collection of poor interpretations of tiny info bits.

(3) Ergo, Cheney had impossibly enough hard evidence for his claims.

(4) Which in turn means by the definition of "lie" in notable dictionaries that Cheney lied and is therefore a liar.

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Which is just one of a gazillion of ways to show that he was lying.

It's actually quite easy to prove that something is as it is (Cheney=liar), while it is often impossible to prove that something is not (Iraq= no WMD).
That was the bad luck of Saddam - and now it's bad luck for Cheney, for it is simple to prove this trait.

The only difficulty in this thing is apparently to admit.

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By the way; I opened this hornet's nest with a side remark about the manipulation talents of Cheney/Rove. This turned into a quite fiery discussion about the reasons for the Iraq war - doesn't that look suspiciously like a very sensitive spot in the U.S.' flank?

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The debates were over how much, whether ..., and whether ...

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You mean those debates that you remember now.

For I remember very different ones, including such that asked why the hell one would want to invade a country in order to get rid of its chemical weapons. That's the most reliable method of provoking their use (if they exist at all), after all. The whole rationale was illogical and questioned, and a decade of bullying and strangling Iraq made sure that U.S./UK assertions were not taken as credible without hard evidence in some debates that I saw.

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

By the way; I opened this hornet's nest with a side remark about the manipulation talents of Cheney/Rove. This turned into a quite fiery discussion about the reasons for the Iraq war - doesn't that look suspiciously like a very sensitive spot in the U.S.' flank?

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Hardly--I'm not American, and I opposed the war from the outset.

My only interest in the debate is to accurately portray the intelligence debates at the time.

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Well, the question is in part about whether European Intelligence services were collectors or consumers of information.

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SISMI, anyone? :D

Fuchs,

You wrongly disparage Europe's intelligence capabilities. They lack many of our technical collection capabilities, but other than that, they are equals. In some areas they provide superior information to what the US has.

You also fundamentally misunderstand intelligence itself. Very rarely is there "definitive" or "smoking gun" evidence. One doesn't need much analysis with definitive "Zimmerman telegram" type of information. The intelligence business is almost always about "interpretations of tiny bits of info" that require a significant analysis. Most of those tiny bits of info are ambiguous, meaning the info could potential support multiple conclusions. Inevitably, analysts, for one reason or another, will look at a body of such evidence and reach the wrong conclusion. This is particularly true when there is deception by an adversary, which was the case with Iraq. Iraq was simultaneously attempting to convince one audience it still had WMD and another audience that it did not. This duplicitous policy was confirmed by many of the principles in Iraq's hierarchy.

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It's astonishing how difficult it is to admit mistake and lying or officials.

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Well if you ask anyone in the intel business (including me), they will tell you that the Iraq WMD debacle was a huge mistake - so big there was a commission on the subject along with several studies and a major reorganization of the US intelligence community. I'm not sure who is refusing to admit mistake except perhaps some politicians, but then politicians rarely admit mistakes on anything.

Lying is a different matter. The difference between lying and simply being wrong comes down to intent. As I said, it may be the case that some policymakers intentionally lied about Iraq. In fact, it would not surprise me at all if that were the case - deception and selling policy is part of a politician's job description. It's hard to know for certain, however, because many honest people (like me) looked at the evidence and came to similar conclusions as the policymakers you believe lied. How can you know that someone like me was simply wrong while concluding with certainty someone else lied? The problem with your argument is that a lot of honest people who saw the same evidence thought Iraq still had WMD as well.

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Originally Posted by Entropy

You also fundamentally misunderstand intelligence itself. Very rarely is there "definitive" or "smoking gun" evidence. One doesn't need much analysis with definitive "Zimmerman telegram" type of information. The intelligence business is almost always about "interpretations of tiny bits of info" that require a significant analysis. Most of those tiny bits of info are ambiguous, meaning the info could potential support multiple conclusions. Inevitably, analysts, for one reason or another, will look at a body of such evidence and reach the wrong conclusion.

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Yet that's irrelevant and was therefore not considered by me; such work does only provide hints and rumours, not evidence. The discussion was all about evidence.

I've got to disagree to some extent as well; it's usually possible to confirm true rumours in a few years' time.

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

Yet that's irrelevant and was therefore not considered by me; such work does only provide hints and rumours, not evidence. The discussion was all about evidence.

I've got to disagree to some extent as well; it's usually possible to confirm true rumours in a few years' time.

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Well, you are simply wrong on both counts. On the first, take, for instance, signal intercepts of Iraqi military personnel discussing WMD and, specifically, orders to ensure that facilities did not have any WMD before inspectors arrived. This intercept could be interpreted in two ways: 1) An effort to hide evidence of elicit activity or 2) an effort to ensure compliance and ensure there were no unforeseen surprises during the inspection. The interpretation depends on an analysis of other evidence and various contexts. Just a couple of examples: One context was the indisputable Iraqi efforts to deceive inspectors after the war in 1991, which led analysts to conclude the first interpretation was more likely. A second context was the unilateral destruction of weapons (done contrary to the cease-fire) which could not be independently verified. That also biased analysts toward the first interpretation.

Most of the information on Iraq's programs was similar in nature to that intercept in that it was ambiguous and could potentially support differing conclusions. That does not make that evidence mere "rumor" or "hints" that can simply be discarded. Ambiguous evidence is allowed in courtrooms around the world every single day.

Take another case - intelligence assessments of Iraq's nuclear program before the 1991 Gulf War which greatly underestimated Iraq's nuclear capabilities. There was evidence that Iraq was developing an advanced EMISS enrichment program, yet that evidence was misinterpreted or discounted. It turned out there was an advanced EMISS program, one that wasn't confirmed until inspectors got to the sites, saw it for themselves and, eventually, chased down all the documentation about it.

In that case, just like the failure on Iraqi WMD before OIF, there was sufficient evidence beforehand to make the right conclusion but the evidence was misinterpreted. Poor analysis and misinterpretation may be a sign of negligence or incompetence or an honest mistake, but it is not conclusively a sign of lying or deception.

The fact remains that most of the US and Western intelligence communities and national security policymakers thought Iraq retained weapons long before former VP Cheney entered the White House. The Bush WH intelligence conclusions were not substantially different from the Clinton WH conclusions (the exceptions being the bio and nuclear programs). The difference was policy. You should go back and read the op-eds of former Clinton officials prior to OIF. They did not, for the most part, dispute the intelligence conclusions - they disputed the Bush administration policy of going to war. Were those who believed the intelligence yet opposed the policy liars too?