It's the Tribes (merged thread)

[John T. Fishel]

Back in ancient times when I was a current intel analyst on the Army Staff, CIA produced a classified basic intelligence document on nearly all the countries of the world - it had everything you ever wanted to know, and a lot you didn't. Then, sometime in the 70s or 80s they stopped producing it. Meanwhile, the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, on a DA contract, produces the Area handbook Series - Country Studies. They are good but not at all up to date. (El Salvador is current as of 1988!) DOD does produce some Country Handbooks - marked FOUO - with lots of pictures of military hardware. And that seems to be where we stand on basic intelligence, so we have to contract out for a study like this one - long after we really need it.
In the Spring 2005, the Security and Defense Studies Review (the e-journal of the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies of NDU) published a special issue devoted to the ongoing UN PKO mission in Haiti. See link:

http://www.ndu.edu/chds/journal/indexarcspring05.htm

The study is being published this summer by NDU Press/Potomac Press under the title, Capacity Building for Peacekeeping: The Case of Haiti, with all the chapters that were in Spanish or Portuguese (about half) now translated to English - as soon as I finish the final edits. The final article/chapter (at the link in English) by my colleague Andres Saenz and me addresses, in part the issue of this forum - the dearth of basic intelligence and recommends several fixes. But even if implemented beyond my wildest dreams, the problem remains: "You can lead the horse to water, but you can't make him drink." (It really is as true of horses as it is of people.)

[Tom Odom]

So if this type of information were available in 2003 to the extent possible (i.e. some of the information from the report is based on post 2003 actions), is your thought that it wouldn't make a difference? Also, it would seem that you are arguing as well that there can't be any bottom up influence on decisions.

Shek,

This information was available in 2003 as it was in 1990 when I was the current intel analyst on the Middle East for the Army Staff, including Desert Shield and Storm, Provide Comfort, and the aftermath in southern Iraq. Given that the Undersecretary of Defense Wolfowitz had testified before Congress that there were no ethnic divisions in Iraq as in the Balkans and that a war against Iraq would pay for itself, I don't see any chance that input from below, outside, or elsewhere inside would have changed the operative assumptions of that period.

That is not to say that such material or thinking is irrelevant; just the opposite in fact because sooner or later reality catches up making this input critical.

Best

Tom