After 9-11, intelligence is put through a prism, not a focusing lens.
A guest editorial by Progressive Gold reader Louis P. Nevitt
Thursday, July 10, 2003
These past 7 days have been extraordinary for American
politics and revisionist history. It started with the
belligerent taunt to our adversaries; which they have
obviously heard. The statement ?bring em on? has not
been denounced by our leaders as it should have been,
but has been amplified by the retiring general Tommie
Franks and Republican apologists. This was followed
shortly by the Meet the Press interview and NY Times
op-ed piece by Joseph Wilson that clearly delineated
the fact that the State Department, the Defense
Department and the White House were all informed of
the mythical uranium purchases by the CIA back in
March 2002. Monday the White House admitted that the
information should not have been included in the State
of the Union.
Let me touch on this minor presidential speech that
our liberal media is now making out to be so
insignificant. The State of the Union is the only
Constitutionally mandated speech. It is attended by
both chambers of Congress, the entire cabinet (absent
one, in case the plane crash scenario written by Tom
Clancy ever happens), the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all
intelligence agencies and the Supreme Court; virtually
our entire federal government.
Republican apologists are asking why one small line in
the president?s report on the State of the Union could
be blown so out of proportion. This shows either how
short their attention spans are, or how short they
believe the American publics? attention span is. A
few short years ago, our country was dragged through a
formal impeachment proceeding in the House of
Representatives and trial in the Senate because of one
small line; ?I did not have sexual relations with that
woman. . .? Now America and the world is faced with
the fact that America was dragged through a war based
on threats of uranium ?mushroom clouds?, aluminum
tubes with ?no other plausible purpose?, chemical
trailers with ?no other plausible purpose? and tons of
bio and chemical agents that were ?an imminent threat?
to the world. Virtually none of the threats that the
American public were sacred-out-of-their-wits with
turned out to be true.
A week after the State of the Union, Colin Powell
presented many of these threats to the United Nations
and the world. One glaring piece of disinformation
that was left out was the little line about purchasing
uranium from Africa. As we have read in Newsweek,
days before Powell?s presentation, he ?threw papers in
the air? and said, ?I am not reading this shit?. This
was just days after the State of the Union. Powell
knew it was shit; we know that for a fact because he
didn?t present it. Shockingly, our Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfled didn?t know it was shit until
?days ago?; according to his sworn testimony before a
Senate panel yesterday, Wednesday, July 9, 2003. I
guess he didn?t hear, as many of us ?progressives? did
back in early March when the UN?s international atomic
agency broke the news, or in the week of June 9, 2003
when Time, Newsweek and U.S. News all wrote about the
forged documents, or when Dr. Rice was being grilled
about it on Meet the Press and This Week. In front of
a Senate panel under oath, Donald Rumsfeld did in fact
say he only learned of it ?days ago?.
I feel the crux of his statement was defined by how he
claimed to filter the intelligence during the run up
to this war and occupation that has cost hundreds of
American lives, thousands of Iraqi lives, billions
upon billions of dollars and the reputation of our
beloved country. He said that the intelligence was
viewed through the ?prism of 9-11?. Now for those of
you who know a little bit about optics, prisms skew
light; they cut it up into its parts. They do not
focus light. Therefore, when we were told that the
aluminum tubes have ?no other plausible purpose?, they
were in effect looking only at the blue light and not
at the green light. When our president told the world
in Poland that ?we found WMDs. . . two trailers?, that
?intelligence? was a fraction of the whole light, not
the truth.
To focus on issues and observe details, intelligence
professionals try to include all the possibilities and
report on them objectively so that informed decisions
can be made. Never has that mandate been more
imperative than in the aftermath of America?s greatest
intelligence failure. To find out what really
happened in the months before 9-11 and the months
prior to the second gulf war, the methods for
gathering intelligence need to be focused, not parsed,
so that we can keep anything like this from ever
happening again. We need to objectively investigate
how the intelligence was reported and acted upon. If
our Constitution is going to last another 214 years,
those who have sworn to uphold and defend it today
have do their jobs today so that the world will know
that no one is above the law. If our Congress, the
public and the world were lied to so that we could go
settle a grudge, then someone has to answer and be
held accountable. The White House has in fact
answered; it is now up to the legislature to hold them
all accountable. If they do not, it will be up to the
people to vote in a new legislature AND executive.
Louis P. Nevitt is a Desert Storm vet who completed a
law degree after serving 10 years in the military. He
is currently writing freelance and following his
entrepreneurial dreams.