Stunning report on prewar intelligence

One of the great myths of the Iraq war is that responsibility for the catastrophe is somehow attributable to the failures of the intelligence community. Some of this is fair: the war was sold to the American public largely on the back of CIA Director George "Slamdunk" Tenet's willingness to allow the Bush regime to publicly misrepresent the community's assessment of the likelihood that Saddam has WMDs. And without that sales job, there might have been no war.

But the real story about intelligence and the war is how much the intelligence community has gotten things right. That elemental rightness explains why there has been a running war between the White House and Langley for much of the past four years. On the one hand, the White House has waged an overt and public campaign to pin the political blame for the Iraq catastrophe on the intelligence community. The White House has been able to largely get away with this political misrepresentation because the classified status of the intelligence reports has made it hard for reporters or anyone else to challenge the White House's claims about the content of these reports. On the other hand, the intelligence community and some (presumably Democratic) members of Congress have fired back by leaking the intelligence reports showing that they did tell the President that there was scant evidence that Saddam had WMDs, that there was no evidence that he had operational connections to Al Qaeda, and that any attempt at replacing the Iraqi dictatorship would be fraught with difficulties, and likely to create enormous new problems.

The latest sortie in this battle has just taken place, and it takes the form of a devastating new report from the Senate Intelligence Committee which gives the lie to to the oft-heard claims that the Iraq catastrophe was either (1) unanticipated and unanticipatable and/or (b) simply the result of poor execution by the Bush administration. The Senate report summarizes the pre-war intelligence reports issued by the intelligence agencies -- notably two still-classified reports by National Intelligence Council, which is the umbrella organization responsible for synthesizing intelligence estimates from across the Intelligence Community -- concerning what the intelligence community believed would be the likely consequences of invading Iraq. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee report, the major prewar conclusions of the community (and I quote):

• Democracy: The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that establishing a stable democratic government in Iraq would be a long, difficult and probably turbulent challenge.
• Terrorism: The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that al Qaida would probably see an opportunity to accelerate its operational tempo and increase terrorist attacks during and after a US-Iraq War
• Terrorism: The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that a heightened terrorist threat resulting from a war with Iraq, after an initial spike, would probably decline slowly over the subsequent 3-5 years.
• Domestic instability: The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that Iraq was a deeply divided society that would likely engage in violent conflict unless the occupying power prevented it.
• Political Islam: The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that the United States' defeat and occupation of Iraq would result in a surge of Political Islam and funding for terrorist groups.
• The influence of Saddam's neighbors: The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that Iraq's neighbors would jockey for influence in Iraq, with activities ranging from humanitarian reconstruction assistance to fomenting strife among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups.
• The influence of Saddam's neighbors: The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that Iranian leaders would try to influence the shape of post-Saddam Iraq to preserve Iranian security and to demonstrate that Iran is an important regional actor.
• Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that military action to eliminate Iraqi WMD would not cause other regional states to abandon their WMD programs, or their desire to develop such programs.
• Security: The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that the Iraqi government would have to walk a fine line between dismantling the worst aspects of Saddam's police, security, and intelligence forces and retaining the capacity to enforce nationwide peace.
  
• Oil: The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that Iraq's large petroleum resources would make reconstruction a less difficult challenge than political transformation, but that postwar Iraq would nonetheless face significant economic challenges
• Humanitarian Issues: The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that major outside assistance would be needed to meet humanitarian needs.
• Infrastructure: The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that major outside assistance would be needed to rebuild Iraq's water and sanitation infrastructure.
  

Every one of those claims is detailed at copious length, with lots of footnotes. Moreover, with the partial exception of the comment on oil (which did not anticipate the insurgency's ability to be able to indefinitely cripple oil production capabilities), every one of these assessments was spot-on.

There was an intelligence failure, all right. But it took place in the Oval Office, not in the three-letter agencies.