Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity: A Lifeline Out

[babylonsister]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/14/a_lifeline_out.php

A Lifeline Out
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
March 14, 2007



MEMORANDUM FOR :
Speaker of the House
Senate Majority Leader

FROM :
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
Steering Group:
Ray Close, Princeton, NJ
Larry Johnson, Bethesda, MD
David C. MacMichael, Linden, VA
Ray McGovern, Arlington, VA
Coleen Rowley, Apple Valley, MN

SUBJECT:
Dénouement on Iraq: First Stop the Bleeding

In the coming weeks a Congress that is willing to assert its prerogative as a co-equal branch of government has a unique opportunity to stop the needless deaths and maiming of U.S. troops in Iraq and bring them home in an orderly way this year. To do that, it must use its constitutionally mandated authority—the power of the purse. Although the president, vice president and their most ardent supporters blindly insist that victory is a troop surge away, the current U.S. military commander on the ground, General David Petraeus, concedes that no military victory is possible. Victory will only be secured through a political solution. The question is not whether U.S. troops will remain permanently in Iraq. The vast majority of Americans agree that the U.S. presence in Iraq is temporary. The real question is how many more Americans will be killed and wounded in a civil war that pits Sunnis against Shias.

Background: A movement of retired intelligence officers established in January 2003 out of concern for the politicization of our profession, VIPS’ first analytic effort was a same-day critique of Colin Powell’s performance at the U.N. on February 5, 2003. (At the time, we seemed the only ones not at all impressed.) Since then we have issued eleven more briefing memoranda, most of them addressed to President George W. Bush. Our intent was to make available sane, unadulterated intelligence analysis to foster enlightened decision-making on the Middle East. We have not the slightest hint, though, that our memoranda actually reached the president. And when we released them to the media, our efforts received little ink or airtime.

This president and vice president have made a regular practice of standing the intelligence process on its head. For example, they decided on the “surge” (which is looking more and more like escalation) before the intelligence community issued its National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), “Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead” in January. To their credit, the authors resisted pressure to support the notion that a “surge” would improve the U.S. position in Iraq; the analysts refused to budge and made it abundantly clear that, surge or not, the U.S. position would continue to erode.

The only trace of unacceptable policy influence on the preparation of that NIE appeared in the unclassified Key Judgments where the straw man of “rapid withdrawal” was introduced and knocked down forcefully again and again (Monday by Cheney, and again yesterday by the editors of The Washington Post in their lead editorial). Intelligence analysts have complained that they were forced to estimate what would result from “rapid withdrawal” of U.S. troops from Iraq, but not what would result from a gradual or phased withdrawal. Although the chairman of the estimate assured senators at a hearing on February 27 that no political pressure had been applied to the drafters, he could not explain why the most extreme option, “rapid withdrawal,” was singled out for debunking.

To be sure, in the wake of frequent visits by Cheney and I. Lewis Libby to CIA headquarters to help the analysts, and the ensuing debacle in intelligence on Iraq, U.S. intelligence was thoroughly discredited. Still, it makes no sense to make key foreign policy decisions in an intelligence vacuum. When we served in U.S. intelligence, the president (and sometimes the Congress) would ask us for our considered view on likely foreign reaction to this or that policy before final decisions were taken. Quickly-prepared, time-sensitive estimates were called Special National Intelligence Estimates (SNIEs). Before President Lyndon Johnson started bombing Vietnam, for example, he asked for a SNIE addressing the question as to whether bombing would make a significant difference in helping defeat the Vietnamese Communist “insurgency.” That was a no-brainer; we said no. He went ahead anyway, but the point is that he would not have thought of making such a decision without obtaining the unvarnished views of intelligence analysts first.

more...

[Joanne98]

1. k&r

[ShortnFiery]

2. Excellent ! K & R. n/t