- Oct 9, 1999
- 12,513
- 49
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You know, something occured to me today; the news came on and was discussing the missing weapons of mass destruction.
I remembered that the CIA totally dropped the ball on the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why? According to all of their human intelligence, the economic machine of the USSR was running full tilt, and things were good. But what they didn't realize was that the producers were fudging their numbers for the higher ups and gents in the Politburo, so the entire nation was set up on a house of cards.
Something similar could have happened in Iraq. Saddam could have ordered his generals, "Hey, I want nukes. I want bio-chem weapons. Get it done."
It's never really been revealed what our source of humint was in the Iraqi government, it's entirely within the realm of possibility that the folks Saddam ordered to do the research looked at each other and decided that they couldn't do what was asked of them . . . for whatever reason. So they fudged it, and spoofed the upper level guys (including our spies?). They came up with millions of pages of documents, and a few impressive "Mr. Wizard's Home Gas Centrifuges" to show off to the upper-level henchmen. Sure, they had poison gas from the old days that they used against the Kurds, but maybe that got spilled in the desert, or went bad, or whatever. Fill a test tube up with a vague white powder and say, "This is anthrax." Who's going to be crazy enough to think it's not real, and test it out? What does uranium look like really? Show me some yellowish rocks and say it's uranium, and if I'm one of Hussein's inner circle, I'm more than likely going to believe you. It's the Information Minister method of showing your boss that you're doing a good job.
The fact that Saddam supposedly ordered his troops to use WMDs when the coalition invaded supports this, as well - maybe they weren't used, because they didn't, in fact, actually have them.
I remembered that the CIA totally dropped the ball on the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why? According to all of their human intelligence, the economic machine of the USSR was running full tilt, and things were good. But what they didn't realize was that the producers were fudging their numbers for the higher ups and gents in the Politburo, so the entire nation was set up on a house of cards.
Something similar could have happened in Iraq. Saddam could have ordered his generals, "Hey, I want nukes. I want bio-chem weapons. Get it done."
It's never really been revealed what our source of humint was in the Iraqi government, it's entirely within the realm of possibility that the folks Saddam ordered to do the research looked at each other and decided that they couldn't do what was asked of them . . . for whatever reason. So they fudged it, and spoofed the upper level guys (including our spies?). They came up with millions of pages of documents, and a few impressive "Mr. Wizard's Home Gas Centrifuges" to show off to the upper-level henchmen. Sure, they had poison gas from the old days that they used against the Kurds, but maybe that got spilled in the desert, or went bad, or whatever. Fill a test tube up with a vague white powder and say, "This is anthrax." Who's going to be crazy enough to think it's not real, and test it out? What does uranium look like really? Show me some yellowish rocks and say it's uranium, and if I'm one of Hussein's inner circle, I'm more than likely going to believe you. It's the Information Minister method of showing your boss that you're doing a good job.
The fact that Saddam supposedly ordered his troops to use WMDs when the coalition invaded supports this, as well - maybe they weren't used, because they didn't, in fact, actually have them.