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Sat 8 Feb, 2003 01:21 pm
The New York Times (and I'm sure other papers) printed today an article in which it says the British government admits that large parts of the recent Iraqi dossier (parts of which were used by Powell in his speech to the United Nations) had been lifted from magazines and journals, some of which date back to 1990. A spokesman for Blair defended it as being solid and accurate..
This is not to say that some information may not be correct. But the parts that were presented to the U.N. were represented as being up-to-date intelligence, and were being used as proof that a war with Iraq was necessary. The implication is that there is no true, up-to-date intelligence on this (something which has been hinted at many times).
Was Powell aware of this, and did he use it anyway? Or was he unaware? I thought he was too smart, too principled to allow himself to be used.
This is a link to the NYT article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/international/europe/08BRIT.html
good soldiers follow orders, especially in public.
Usage of open sources and processing of the information available there is also a part of intelligence work. We cannot reduce intelligence to spying, wiretapping and satellite surveillance; analysis of media publications is also an important part of it.
Powell is the administration's point man in this. He follows orders if not facts.
However, steissd, this material was 12 yeras old, used without permission of the author (who said in an interview, he had given them, if asked, some more recent material) and 'sold' as their own intelligence results.
Edgarblythe, what is wrong in Secretary of State being loyal to the President?
Intelligence work should be composed of many different factors, put together to make as much of a whole as possible. I thought this was what Mossad had always done, sucessfully.
If a secretary of state is loyal to the president, no matter what, then he or she is not performing a service, but is, instead, merely acting as a yes man. We are talking state here, not man.
One of the things that has become painfully obvious is that we have had no clear foreign policy. Another thing is that Powell was frozen out by this administration so much. There were meetings held to which Powell was not invited, and Powell and Rumsfeld, et al, had battles about going to the U.N. Then, after the U.N., Powell became a fair-haired boy. Actually, the administration had little choice, since polls increasingly showd that the public trusted Powell more than Bush. So they couldn't afford to let Powell go.
That said, with all the integrity they say Powell has (alhthough a look at Desert Storm doesn't show it), why would he allow himself to be a party to this British dossier mess? And if he didn't know it, why not?
I think Dyslexia has the point, but until more people start looking at the CIC with a more critical eye, we'll not get anywhere.
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