Worthwhile Comments on the NIE Report

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" . . . President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney also have highlighted the war in Iraq as the United States' main thrust in the fight against terrorism, contending that the world is safer without Saddam Hussein in power.
Also, Sunday's newspaper articles on the National Intelligence Estimate -- by the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times -- were "not representative of the complete document," the White House said. That assessment was echoed by National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte, whose office prepared the report.
In a statement e-mailed to reporters Sunday afternoon, Negroponte said "the conclusions of the intelligence community are designed to be comprehensive, and viewing them through the narrow prism of a fraction of judgments distorts the broad framework they create."
"The Estimate highlights the importance of the outcome in Iraq on the future of global jihadism," he said. If Iraq develops "a stable political and security environment, the jihadists will be perceived to have failed, and fewer jihadists will leave Iraq determined to carry on the fight elsewhere."
Negroponte is probably right about the importance of resolving the situation in Iraq, but again, this is a rather evasive response; it's perfectly reasonable for a report to observe that the war has increased the level of danger, but needs to be won. In other words: we've created a bad situation, but we've got to get out of it.
As for whether this part of the document is "representative," I find myself wondering whether any single part of a document that summarizes a wide range of information is going to be "representative." A more interesting question is whether that part of it is accurate and that's the question that the White House is dodging.
It's important to remember that documents like this are not policy documents; they are information to help those who create policy make good decisions. It would be perfectly legitimate for this or any administration to review this kind of data and conclude that while an action might actually endanger us, there are other policy goals that make it, on balance, worthwhile.
The situation is a bit analogous to scientific data that's presented to Congress and the White House. A scientific study will tell you that a certain chemical poses a health risk, or that current levels of carbon emissions are contributing to global warming. The job of policy makers is to weight that evidence against other concerns and decide how to act.
The response to both kinds of information by the Bush administration is revealing. Rather than make an honest determinations ("We understand this risk, but it is outweighed by the following...") this administration generally simply denies that the information is real.
When the administration reacts to these things by ignoring information, rather than putting it in context and explaining how other issues outweigh it, we should be very suspicious. The entire history of the Iraq war has been characterized by this sort of thing, from the ever-shifting rationales that were revealed as wrong one after the other, to the completely unrealistic predictions of the effort (in terms of time, money, and soldiers' lives) required, and now to the impact of our actions.
Dishonesty or incompetence? It's hard to say. As long as the administration chooses to operate in an alternate reality rather than deal with the one its own advisors are presenting to it, we're unlikely to know. "
Posted by John Whiteside at September 26, 2006 11:05 AM on Blue Bayou