Military deception and propaganda

[Abu Suleyman]

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.

[Fuchs]

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.

Wikipedia:

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.

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.

[Abu Suleyman]

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.

Is Wikipedia authoritative now?

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.

[Fuchs]

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

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.

[Ken White]

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.

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

*: 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.

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?

[Fuchs]

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

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.

[Abu Suleyman]

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.

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?

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.

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.

[Ken White]

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...

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.

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.

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

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:

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.

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:

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...

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.

[Ron Humphrey]

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

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

[Entropy]

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.

[Fuchs]

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

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.

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.

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.

[Rex Brynen]

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.

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.

[Fuchs]

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.

-------------------

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.

-------------------

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?

-------------------

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

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.

[Rex Brynen]

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?

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.

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

SISMI, anyone?

[Entropy]

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.

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

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.

[Fuchs]

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.

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.

[Entropy]

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.

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?