LA Times: U.S. Suspects It Received False Tips on Iraq Arms

[manly]

Intelligence officials are reexamining data used in justifying the war. They say Hussein's regime may have sent bogus defectors.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-wmd28aug28,1,2697529.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Apparently, the working strategy is to discredit the sources of the intelligence used to make the case for war, even trying to pin the blame on the Ba'ath Party itself.

Unfortunately, you'll have to register at latimes.com to read the article online.

 

[SuperTool]

There was only one "intelligence failure" in the white house.

 

[Gaard]

<<They say Hussein's regime may have sent bogus defectors.>>

This, if true, will absolutely crush Alistar7.



Didn't feel like registering. Who is 'they'?

 

[xxxxxJohnGaltxxxxx]

Yea, that makes sense. "Mohammad, here is your passport and a fake I.D.; go to another country and tell the America and its press that we have weapons of mass destruction so they attack us. Then, when they remove us from power, they'll see we don't have any. That will show Bush by showing he is a liar!"

 

[manly]

I'll type the first two paragraphs [Hmm, wish I had Dragon NaturallySpeaking ]:

Frustrated at the failure to find Saddam Hussein's suspected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have launched a major effort to determine if they were victims of bogus Iraqi defectors who planted disinformation to mislead the West before the war.

The goal, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, "is to see if false information was put out there and got into legitimate channels and we were totally duped on it." He added, "We're reinterviewing all our sources of information on this. This is the entire intelligence community, not just the U.S."

Like JohnGalt alluded to, sounds like a brilliant contingency plan cooked up by the Commander-in-Chief himself (since hanging Tenet out to dry didn't work so well).

 

[drewshin]

Originally posted by: xxxxxJohnGaltxxxxx
Yea, that makes sense. "Mohammad, here is your passport and a fake I.D.; go to another country and tell the America and its press that we have weapons of mass destruction so they attack us. Then, when they remove us from power, they'll see we don't have any. That will show Bush by showing he is a liar!"

there was another article which stated that saddam thought that the only way to deter a u.s. attack was to appear strong (of which he grossly miscalculated, it only hastened the attack). so the idea that he purposefully sent people to deliver misinformation can't totally be dismissed.

 

[xxxxxJohnGaltxxxxx]

Originally posted by: drewshin

Originally posted by: xxxxxJohnGaltxxxxx
Yea, that makes sense. "Mohammad, here is your passport and a fake I.D.; go to another country and tell the America and its press that we have weapons of mass destruction so they attack us. Then, when they remove us from power, they'll see we don't have any. That will show Bush by showing he is a liar!"

there was another article which stated that saddam thought that the only way to deter a u.s. attack was to appear strong (of which he grossly miscalculated, it only hastened the attack). so the idea that he purposefully sent people to deliver misinformation can't totally be dismissed.

Hmmm, I will think this through for a while, but what you say does make sense...but playing though the game theory leads me to believe that Saddam unequivocally denied possessing WMD, so to send someone out to make contrary claims, knowing that it is this very reason (appearing all-powerful) we would preemptively strike him, is illogical...but thanks for the flip-side on this one...food for thought.

 

[DealMonkey]

Disinformation is a powerful intelligence tool. The U.S. uses it all the time. Only in this case, we were all too ready to believe the BS considering the administration was hell-bent on finding something, anything, to justify a military invasion. Who knows? In Saddam's twisted logic, sending out double agents probably made perfect sense.

Some things just have to be seen to be believed.

 

[Czar]

does this mean that the "whole" intel behind the war was based on second hand information?