U.S. Paying for Iraq Intelligence Blunders

[Spazito]

BAGHDAD, Nov 3 (IPS) -- U.S. intelligence-gathering operations are being called into question after the devastating attacks on the weekend and the rocket attacks and suicide bombings rocking Baghdad and other cities almost every day. To many Iraqis in the know, and even among Coalition officials, the answer is clear.


"One of the biggest mistakes of the coalition forces was to dissolve the army and the security forces," Brig. Gen. Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani told IPS in Baghdad. Shahwani left Iraq (news - web sites) in 1990 and became a part of Washington's covert efforts to topple Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).


"We had a good intelligence network," he said. "They knew everybody, they knew the criminals. But they went home. Nobody can do it any more. If you start from the beginning, you need time."

<snip>

"The problem with the CPA is that it is very slow because most of the people here have never served in the Middle East," he says. "They never served in Iraq. They do not know the people. They come for two months and by the time the start learning, they have to leave."

more

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/oneworld/20031103/wl_oneworld/4536718631067871579

[ConcernedCanuk]

1. "U.S. Paying for Iraq Intelligence Blunders" - WRONG headline !!

. . Should read:

"USA's young military people dying for WH Intelligence Blunders"

In the USA, the rich are still getting richer, while the poor get poorer, and the young are dying(so the rich can get richer)

Just My Humble Canadian Opinion

[yellowcanine]

2. USA's young soldiers dying as a result of WH Fixation on WMDs in Iraq

It was the WH political agenda that drove the planning for Iraq - both the invasion plans and the occupation plans. True - there were intelligence blunders - but they were blunders at the top political levels - not at the operative level. The first blunder was to put the best operatives on the WMD hunt rather than assigning them to rooting out the Saddam loyalists. This was done strictly for political reasons. By that time the administration knew WMD's were not a material threat and they were just trying to find something- anything to back up the pre-war assertions. We need a special prosecutor to investigate all of the misuses of intelligence in Iraq - prewar, post invasion, the Plume outing, the whole WMD fiasco.

[0007]

3. U.S. soldiers dying for greedy lying money lords!

.....and using Ahmed Chalabi as a ruthless tactic to convince the American people that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators.

Until we found out that Chalabi was as rotten as the people who hailed him a hero, he was gonna replace Saddam Hussein.