Don't blame the spies

[reprehensor]

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/elizabeth_sullivan/index.ssf?%2Fbase%2Fopinion%2F1075987823312550.xml

Intelligence failures are code for political failures. Spies don't fail. Their political bosses fail by not giving them the money they need or by pigeonholing the facts they uncover into boxes of preconceptions that distort their meaning. By not listening to the caveats from the experts, by cherry-picking the evidence and willfully ignoring interpretations that conflict with the driving ideology, officialdom corrupts the process.

When officials start talking about "intelligence failures," the proper response is to start checking their closets for wrong-doing or mistakes.

With Iraq, the evidence strongly suggests that supposed intelligence mess-ups were actually failures of omission, commission and willful blindness by administration figures who wanted war with Iraq.

A politically motivated attempt to shift the blame to "intelligence services" or to scapegoat CIA chief George Tenet without searching deeper to see where political interference tainted the process would be a disservice to history and to the national security interests of this country. That is particularly so now, when the terrorism war requires a revitalized human intelligence effort, not a demoralized one.

[banana republican]

1. Intelligence failure is appropriate

since * lacks the intelligence to evaluate threats to this country.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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