One idiot's blog

Intelligence about Intelligence

We need more people -- journalists and politicians -- like Robert Kagan. I confess I was all "tell it, brother" at the news of the National intelligence Estimate leaked recently to the press that prompted the New York Times headline, "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat." I mean, duh, the war in Iraq is always item #2 on any Muslim's list of grievances, right behind the genocide in Darf -- I mean, the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and people don't turn to suicide bombing because it seems like a nice career path; they are usually pissed about something. But Kagan lays out a very clear, cool-headed argument that the report -- or what we know of it -- really offers precious little, that we are left with some good questions for which we may never get answers, and that this smells of spin or bias by the NYT and the creators and/or leakers of the report. The report has not been seen by the press, so it's not even clear what exactly is meant by the "terrorist threat", or how it is quantitatively measured. And he points out that it is probably absurd to say definitively that you can attribute any particular terrorist recruitment to anger over the Iraq war; for a great many of these people, if they don't have Iraq as an excuse, it'll just be something else.

Of course, and now I hate to sound like I'm in lock-step with all my liberal friends, colleagues and associates, but I do nonetheless believe that the war in Iraq has, to give a concrete example, probably increased Al-Qaeda recruitment. I'm not sure how I can argue this, necessarily; maybe I'll have to go find some other columnist who lays out that case well. Maybe there is one who can give a sound argument. But what we've got second- or third-hand from the NIE is pretty dubious.

Bush will de-classify part of the report tomorrow. I'm sure that'll make everything crystal clear.

OK, you can stop laughing about the idea of politicians asking hard questions with no clear answers.