- "Common sense would say: Bush & Blair were "deceived",
because they wanted to be deceived. Bush and the Neo-cons who have taken
over Washington had decided from the beginning to attack Iraq, mainly in
order to control the oil, and the tales of WMD were designed to provide
a pretext that would frighten the masses."
-
-
- In one of the episodes of the outstanding British TV
series "Yes, Minister!" the Permanent Undersecretary, Sir Humphrey,
teaches his minister how to use Commissions of Inquiry:
- Take an honorable retired judge, a doddering old fool,
and put him in charge of the inquiry, with a sizable honorarium. Help him
to arrive himself at the required conclusions. Feed him the appropriate
facts and hint at a peerage. From there on, everything will work out as
desired.
-
- At this moment, three parallel but separate commissions
of inquiry are at work: one American, one British and one Israeli. All
three are supposed to find out why the intelligence community supplied
the government with false information about Saddam Hussein's weapons of
mass destruction (WMD).
-
- Of course, the commissions are not really intended to
discover the truth. Their purpose is whitewash. In order to understand
what has happened, no honorable judge, Lord, former senator or retired
Mossad operative is required. Simple common sense will do.
-
- Clearly, he who appoints a commission of Inquiry decides
in advance what the conclusions will be. When a member of the Establishment
is appointed to investigate the Establishment , the conclusion will be
that the Establishment has committed no wrong.
-
- In Israel, for example, we had the Agranat commission.
Shimon Agranat, a respected Supreme Court judge, was appointed chairman
of a commission and asked to apportion blame for the fateful failures of
the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The inquiry was limited in advance to the first
days of the war, so the events leading up to the war (including government
decisions) were excluded. The result: The Prime Minister (Golda Meir) and
the Minister of Defense (Moshe Dayan) came our white as snow. All the blame
landed on some military officers.
-
- (The conclusions were so scandalous that the general
public rose up against them. The commission's report was thrown into the
waste basket, Golda and Dayan were forced to resign.)
-
- In the UK, Sir Humphrey's method still works. Lately,
an honorable etc. etc. judge was charged with the investigation of whether
the Prime Minister has "sexed-up" an intelligence report in order
to drag the country into war. The honorable judge concluded, of course,
that the Prime Minister was completely blameless, and that the hostile
media (in this case the BBC) were to blame for everything.
-
- In Britain, unlike Israel, when a Supreme Judge makes
his decision, everybody stands up and sings "God Save the Queen".
A few young people donned judges' wigs and threw white paint at Downing
Street buildings, in order to suggest that the Lord judge's report was
a whitewash. But the Prime Minister was not forced to resign, instead,
the chairman of the BBC did.
-
- Now three commissions are at work. The Israeli one, which
was appointed in secret and works in secret, will finish first. After that,
it will be the turn of the British one (which is required to investigate
only the intelligence community, after the honorable Lord judge has investigated
the political structure). In the end, well after the election in the US,
the American commission will publish its report. All three resemble each
other: they were appointed by the political leaders, they are forbidden
to investigate the political leadership and tasked with inquiring only
into the quality of the information supplied by the intelligence agencies
to the political leaders.
-
- President George W. Bush dragged the United States into
war on the basis of the contention that Saddam Hussein had WMD that endangered
America. Saddam, he said, would turn over such weapons to al-Qaida terrorists,
who would use them to cause mass slaughter in American cities.
-
- Prime Minister Tony Blair told his people that Saddam
could use WMD against British cities within 45 minutes (Not 40, not 50,
but exactly 45).
-
- In Israel, the Sharon government distributed gas masks
to the population and created panic, saying that Saddam would shower us
with missiles carrying chemical warheads.
-
- Well, the Americans and British occupied Iraq and no
WMD were found. No chemical, no biological, no nuclear. None at all.
-
- So, how come all these illustrious intelligence agencies
were wrong? What made them feed their political leaders with false information
and cause Bush, Blair & Co. to start a war in which a country was devastated
and many human beings killed?
-
- Common sense would say: Bush & Blair were "deceived",
because they wanted to be deceived. Bush and the Neo-cons who have taken
over Washington had decided from the beginning to attack Iraq, mainly in
order to control the oil, and the tales of WMD were designed to provide
a pretext that would frighten the masses.
-
- Did the political leaders explicitly demand that their
intelligence organizations supply them with mendacious reports? Perish
the thought! The commissions of inquiry will affirm that no such thing
happened. And correctly so. The leaders did not ask for this, because there
was no need to ask. The American, British and Israeli intelligence chiefs
knew perfectly well what was required of them and delivered the goods.
They knew which side their bread was buttered on.
-
- Did the intelligence people deliberately falsify their
information to achieve this? There was no need. The intelligence community
collects enormous quantities of information. From this huge pile they are
supposed to extract the items that they consider credible. Surprisingly
enough, the credible material is always that which the political leaders
desire.
-
- The decisive function of every intelligence agency is
not the collecting of the information, but its evaluation. How do the mosaic
stones form a picture? That is a matter of judgement and intuition, both
subject to a general "concept". This is a mental pattern in the
mind of the intelligence chief. And since the intelligence chiefs are appointed
by the political leaders, no wonder that their concepts almost always suit
the concepts of the leaders.
-
- I predict that all three commissions of inquiry, each
in its own country, will come to the conclusion (a) that the political
leaders did not ask the intelligence people to falsify their reports and
did not exert any pressure on them, (b) that the intelligence people acted
honestly and supplied intelligence evaluations according to their best
knowledge and abilities, (c) that everybody acted according to the best
information available at the time, and (d) that there was a lamentable
professional failure.
-
- Neither of the three commissions will state the obvious:
that the intelligence agencies are under the jurisdiction of the President
(in the US) or the Prime Minister (in the UK and Israel), and that these
bear the responsibility for their deeds and misdeeds. They appoint the
intelligence chiefs and are supposed to supervise them. Therefore, in view
of this colossal intelligence failure, all three of them should resign.
That will not be said and will not happen.
- If all the blame is laid at the door of the intelligence
people, they should be looked at. All over the world, they are admired.
The mystique that envelops them creates an almost religious cult that feeds
a large flock of journalists and writers. The intelligence operative pictured
in their stories is a superman like Smiley, John Le Carre's hero, a brilliant
man endowed with almost superhuman intelligence, a cold-blooded, sophisticated
genius who weaves his nets with incredible patience.
-
- Unfortunately, such a person does not exist. As one says
in English: "army intelligence" is an oxymoron.
-
- How do I know? There are some simple tests, which every
logical person can apply for himself.
-
- First test: human quality. All intelligence people are
eventually pensioned off, and then they can be viewed from close up, without
censorship and the cover of mystery. And what does one see? Among them
there are some highly intelligent people. There are also quite a number
of complete fools. But most of them are very average, superficial people,
with very ordinary, conformist views. We would not rely on such people
to give us advice on our investments. It is quite shocking to realize that
these people have decided the fate of nations.
- In Israel this is especially obvious, because retired
intelligence people star as political commentators in all our media. It
appears that their average IQ is not higher than that of Knesset members.
And, since one cannot assume that before that they were geniuses, and only
on retirement some mysterious neurological process eliminated their mental
superiority, there is no escape from the conclusion that even before, their
IQ was average-minus.
- In an apparatus in which such people dominate, an intelligent
person has to assimilate himself. He adapts in order to survive.
-
- Second test: results. By now it is banal to mention the
classical intelligence failures of World War II. The Russians were surprised
by the German attack on their country, the Americans by the Japanese bombardment
of Pearl Harbor. American intelligence was surprised by the collapse of
the Soviet Union. American and Israeli intelligence were totally surprised
by the Khomeini revolution in Iran. Israeli intelligence was surprised
by the Egyptian army concentrations in Sinai on the eve of the 1967 "Six-day"
war, by the Egyptian-Syrian attack on Yom Kippur in 1973, by the advent
of Hizbullah in South Lebanon, by the first and second Intifadas and the
Rabin assassination. American intelligence did not even dream about the
September 11 attack. The list is long.
-
- The American, British and Israeli intelligence agencies
did not have the slightest idea about what was happening in Iraq, and whether
Saddam had WMD or not. They guessed. And if one guesses, it is best to
guess what the government wants to hear.
- "Does Saddam have weapons of mass destruction?"
- "Yes, Prime Minister!"
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