Intelligence, WMD and Iraq

by John Thompson

02/16/04

There is an old story that arose from the Jewish communities in Russia at the end of the 19^th Century: A young Jew sees his Rabbi reading one of the foulest anti-Semitic newspapers then available; so he asks "Why are you reading that, Rabbi?" The Rabbi responds: "I like to see how powerful I am; it always says that the ‘Jews are behind this, the Jews are behind that.’"

The directors of the World’s leading intelligence agencies might have similar feelings when reading the news.

In actual fact, the CIA, or the NSA, or our own CSIS and the CSE, or MI6 and all the other such groups are not omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. Their reports are not Delphic oracles or divine revelation. Many of us expect them to be always right, or — like a disgraced deity — turn on them when they are found to be wrong.

Some people who are more committed to a particular gestalt or ideology distrust intelligence when it doesn’t agree with their notions about the world. This is particularly true for modern Western liberals — who often believe in the perfectibility of human nature and that all intelligent people must surely share their preconceptions about the world. However, those who work in intelligence soon tend to a far more pessimistic (and realistic) view.

The world’s most popular military historian, John Keegan, has a new book on the shelves. His Intelligence and War rightly points out that intelligence is a servant of force, and not the other way around — and that intelligence is entirely fallible. Having worked in and on the edges of the world of intelligence for many years, I can say that Keegan is right on.

Critics of President Bush’s liberation of Iraq were very reluctant to accept the reports of Western intelligence agencies that Saddam Hussein had a continuing program for weapons of mass destruction. This wasn’t that they knew this was true, but that they didn’t want to believe that the American-led war could possibly be justified.

As it was, there was every reason to believe that WMDs were in Iraq. First, Iraq had developed chemical weapons and used them against Iran, against Kurdish and Shi’ia rebels. This isn’t myth, but solid historical fact. Iraq had built long-range ballistic missiles, and it is also a solid historic fact that they fired them into Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel. It is also a solid historical fact that the Iraqis were developing nuclear weapons.

When the UN inspection teams turned Iraq upside down in the quest of nuclear, biological and chemical and ballistic missile weapons programs after the 1991 Gulf War they found many development sites and destroyed stockpiles of finished material. It is also a historical fact that the Iraqis engaged in every prevarication, deception and delay to prevent the UN teams from finishing their work.

Given this history, it was entirely natural to conclude that the Iraqis must have continued their programs the moment the UN left the country in 1998 -- and the UN inspection teams stated that there were still stocks of chemical and biological weapons hidden in the country when they left. Western intelligence agencies and most observers (including me) shared this conclusion. After all, Saddam Hussein had made the acquisition of WMD one of the top priorities of his government for some 20 years, and a leopard doesn’t change its spots.

The opponents of the Liberation of Iraq haven’t changed their spots either… Anxious to discredit George W. Bush and the Coalition’s accomplishments, the failure to find any substantial evidence of weapons programs has resulted in accusations in the US and UK that intelligence agencies deliberately supplied misleading information in the months before the war.

These accusations betray two flaws in the accusers. First, they seem to be supposing that intelligence agencies are all-wise and all-knowing. Then, they seem to be saying to these agencies "How dare you not agree with me?" There are some people who should never be trusted with power… Having intelligence at your disposal is a useful asset for statesmen and national leaders, but relying on them to be right all the time is the mark of someone who is too foolish to be trusted with responsibility. Believing that intelligence agencies should agree with your own preconceptions is even more foolish — Stalin behaved that way and lost over 20 million dead as a result.

Intelligence is a tool, not a crutch for decision makers. Moreover, in this case, so what if the agencies and the decision makers were wrong? Saddam Hussein was still toppled, and this was all to the good anyway. His regime certainly won’t have WMD now, will they? Problem solved, end of story.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca