As Obama's War in Iraq and Syria Rumbles On, Are Intel Books Getting Cooked?
Published on
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
by
Common Dreams
As Obama's War in Iraq and Syria Rumbles On, Are Intel Books Getting Cooked?
Reports from inside the intelligence community indicate that what military
assessments find and what the public is being told may be two very different
things
by
Jon Queally, staff writer
President Obama delivered a speech on the nuclear deal with Iran at American
University's School of International Service in Washington, D.C., on August
5, 2015. (Photo: Michael Reynolds/EPA)
Calling to mind the subterfuge made infamous by the administration of George
W. Bush in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, reports are emerging
from within Obama's Pentagon and intelligence community that internal
assessments of the ongoing war against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and
Syria are being "cooked" or "politicized" to fit the public proclamations of
the president, cabinet members, and military commanders.
"Jokes about the oxymoron of 'military intelligence' aside, bad intel leads
to bad decisions. Bad intel created purposefully suggests a war that is
being lost, with the people in charge loathe to admit it."
-former U.S. diplomat Peter Van Buren
In Wednesday's edition, the New York Times cited unnamed "officials familiar
with the inquiry" to report that the Pentagon's inspector general is
conducting an investigation into allegations that military officials "skewed
intelligence assessments" as a way to "provide a more optimistic account of
progress" about the ongoing operations againt ISIS that began more than a
year ago. The focus of the probe is to determine whether or not higher-ups
altered the conclusions drawn by lower-level analysts before passing them
up.
According to the Times:
The investigation began after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence
Agency analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at
United States Central Command - the military headquarters overseeing the
American bombing campaign and other efforts against the Islamic State - were
improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared
for policy makers, including President Obama, the government officials said.
Fuller details of the claims were not available, including when the
assessments were said to have been altered and who at Central Command, or
Centcom, the analyst said was responsible.
In direct contrast to public pronouncements by current and retired top brass
at the White House and Pentagon, the officials who spoke to the Times said
that the internal intelligence reviews in question "paint a sober picture
about how little the Islamic State has been weakened over the past year."
According to the Times, the officials said "the documents conclude that the
yearlong campaign has done little to diminish the ranks of the Islamic
State's committed fighters, and that the group over the last year has
expanded its reach into North Africa and Central Asia."
Though battlefield and strategic assessments often conjure disputes within
the intelligence community, the opening of an IG investigation indicates
these disagreements go beyond the "typical," the Times noted.
Buttressing the initial reporting by the Times, the Daily Beast also spoke
with officials and and intelligence analysts familiar with the matter who
further confirmed that even as assessments find the American-led campaign
against ISIS isn't going very well, "their bosses keep telling them to think
again about those conclusions."
As journalists Shane Harris and Nancy Youssef report:
Senior military and intelligence officials have inappropriately pressured
U.S. terrorism analysts to alter their assessments about the strength of the
self-proclaimed Islamic State, three sources familiar with the matter told
The Daily Beast. Analysts have been pushed to portray the group as weaker
than the analysts believe it actually is, according to these sources, and to
paint an overly rosy a picture about how well the U.S.-led effort to defeat
the group is going,
Reports that have been deemed too pessimistic about the efficacy of the
American-led campaign, or that have questioned whether a U.S.-trained Iraqi
military can ultimately defeat ISIS, have been sent back down through the
chain of command or haven't been shared with senior policymakers, several
analysts alleged.
In other instances, authors of such reports said they understood that their
conclusions should fall within a certain spectrum. As a result, they
self-censored their own views, they said, because they felt pressure to not
reach conclusions far outside what those above them apparently believed.
In response to these reports, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told The Daily Beast he calls
such behavior "the politicization of the intelligence community."
Remarking on that phrase, veteran journalist Spencer Ackerman took to
Twitter and declared, "Never. Politicize. Intelligence. You fool yourself
and other people die as a result."
And writing at his We Meant Well blog on Thursday, former U.S. diplomat
Peter Van Buren, who served in Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion
ordered by President Bush, said the "cooking" of the intelligence books, no
matter what the purpose or the politics, is never a good strategy. He
writes:
While legitimate differences of opinion are common in intel reporting, to be
of value those differences must be presented to policy makers, and played
off one another in an intellectually vigorous check-and-balance fashion.
There is a wide gap between that, and what it appears the Inspector General
is now looking at.
Cooking the intel to match policy makers' expectations has a sordid history
in the annals of American warfare. Analysis during the Vietnam War pushed
forward a steady but false narrative of victory. In the run-up to Iraq War
2.0, State Department analysis claiming Saddam had no weapons of mass
destruction was buried in favor of obvious falsehoods.
Jokes about the oxymoron of "military intelligence" aside, bad intel leads
to bad decisions. Bad intel created purposefully suggests a war that is
being lost, with the people in charge loathe to admit it.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
As Obama's War in Iraq and Syria Rumbles On, Are Intel Books Getting Cooked?
Published on
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
by
Common Dreams
As Obama's War in Iraq and Syria Rumbles On, Are Intel Books Getting Cooked?
Reports from inside the intelligence community indicate that what military
assessments find and what the public is being told may be two very different
things
by
Jon Queally, staff writer
. 29 Comments
.
. President Obama delivered a speech on the nuclear deal with Iran at
American University's School of International Service in Washington, D.C.,
on August 5, 2015. (Photo: Michael Reynolds/EPA)
. Calling to mind the subterfuge made infamous by the administration
of George W. Bush in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, reports
are emerging from within Obama's Pentagon and intelligence community that
internal assessments of the ongoing war against the Islamic State (ISIS) in
Iraq and Syria are being "cooked" or "politicized" to fit the public
proclamations of the president, cabinet members, and military commanders.
. "Jokes about the oxymoron of 'military intelligence' aside, bad
intel leads to bad decisions. Bad intel created purposefully suggests a war
that is being lost, with the people in charge loathe to admit it."
-former U.S. diplomat Peter Van Buren
. In Wednesday's edition, the New York Times cited unnamed "officials
familiar with the inquiry" to report that the Pentagon's inspector general
is conducting an investigation into allegations that military officials
"skewed intelligence assessments" as a way to "provide a more optimistic
account of progress" about the ongoing operations againt ISIS that began
more than a year ago. The focus of the probe is to determine whether or not
higher-ups altered the conclusions drawn by lower-level analysts before
passing them up.
. According to the Times:
The investigation began after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence
Agency analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at
United States Central Command - the military headquarters overseeing the
American bombing campaign and other efforts against the Islamic State - were
improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared
for policy makers, including President Obama, the government officials said.
Fuller details of the claims were not available, including when the
assessments were said to have been altered and who at Central Command, or
Centcom, the analyst said was responsible.
In direct contrast to public pronouncements by current and retired top brass
at the White House and Pentagon, the officials who spoke to the Times said
that the internal intelligence reviews in question "paint a sober picture
about how little the Islamic State has been weakened over the past year."
According to the Times, the officials said "the documents conclude that the
yearlong campaign has done little to diminish the ranks of the Islamic
State's committed fighters, and that the group over the last year has
expanded its reach into North Africa and Central Asia."
Though battlefield and strategic assessments often conjure disputes within
the intelligence community, the opening of an IG investigation indicates
these disagreements go beyond the "typical," the Times noted.
Buttressing the initial reporting by the Times, the Daily Beast also spoke
with officials and and intelligence analysts familiar with the matter who
further confirmed that even as assessments find the American-led campaign
against ISIS isn't going very well, "their bosses keep telling them to think
again about those conclusions."
As journalists Shane Harris and Nancy Youssef report:
Senior military and intelligence officials have inappropriately pressured
U.S. terrorism analysts to alter their assessments about the strength of the
self-proclaimed Islamic State, three sources familiar with the matter told
The Daily Beast. Analysts have been pushed to portray the group as weaker
than the analysts believe it actually is, according to these sources, and to
paint an overly rosy a picture about how well the U.S.-led effort to defeat
the group is going,
Reports that have been deemed too pessimistic about the efficacy of the
American-led campaign, or that have questioned whether a U.S.-trained Iraqi
military can ultimately defeat ISIS, have been sent back down through the
chain of command or haven't been shared with senior policymakers, several
analysts alleged.
In other instances, authors of such reports said they understood that their
conclusions should fall within a certain spectrum. As a result, they
self-censored their own views, they said, because they felt pressure to not
reach conclusions far outside what those above them apparently believed.
In response to these reports, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told The Daily Beast he calls
such behavior "the politicization of the intelligence community."
Remarking on that phrase, veteran journalist Spencer Ackerman took to
Twitter and declared, "Never. Politicize. Intelligence. You fool yourself
and other people die as a result."
And writing at his We Meant Well blog on Thursday, former U.S. diplomat
Peter Van Buren, who served in Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion
ordered by President Bush, said the "cooking" of the intelligence books, no
matter what the purpose or the politics, is never a good strategy. He
writes:
While legitimate differences of opinion are common in intel reporting, to be
of value those differences must be presented to policy makers, and played
off one another in an intellectually vigorous check-and-balance fashion.
There is a wide gap between that, and what it appears the Inspector General
is now looking at.
Cooking the intel to match policy makers' expectations has a sordid history
in the annals of American warfare. Analysis during the Vietnam War pushed
forward a steady but false narrative of victory. In the run-up to Iraq War
2.0, State Department analysis claiming Saddam had no weapons of mass
destruction was buried in favor of obvious falsehoods.
Jokes about the oxymoron of "military intelligence" aside, bad intel leads
to bad decisions. Bad intel created purposefully suggests a war that is
being lost, with the people in charge loathe to admit it.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
