The Downing Street Memo is provocative and interesting and was initially underplayed in this country. It offers a rare window into the highest levels of American decision making about the Iraq War. But it's far from conclusive as I'm sure you'd agree. Bush obviously wanted a war, but a small bit of wiggle room if Saddam made a clean brest of his doings, which Bush knew wouldn't happen.
The whole trope about "fixing intelligence around policy" is the most suggestive part of the DSM, but unclear in its meaning.
I can see at least two interpretations. The political left's take is "Aha, here's the proof that our leaders were deliberately cooking intelligence to justify an invasion that was otherwise unjustifiable." It's plausible and perhaps true. Perhaps Tenet and company knew the evidence was insupportable so they goaded the CIA analysts to tell them what they wanted to here. There's been contradictory evidence on this point.
But there is a second, more charitable interpretation. George Tenet and the bulk of the American political establishment appeared to genuinely believe, albeit based on ultimately suspect evidence, that Saddam was hiding WMDs and was trying to reconstitute his WMD capacity. The debate was about how far along Saddam was, not whether this was true. We had intelligence that was still stuck in 1998 when the inspectors were kicked out and we didn't know what was true in 2002. If you're George Tenet and you honestly believe this and no ones challenging you, except to pick nits, then it's not a great leap to start framing intelligence in this manner.
The Downing Street Memo is interesting here in using the word "policy." Tenet might well have been saying to his Brit counterpart, "The American policy is to invade Iraq so my job is to come up with the most convincing intelligence rationale for this course of action. I'm not going create intelligence, but I will highlight the best stuff we got that suggest Saddam is up to no good and can't be allowed to conspire against the U.S. any longer." I think Tenet and others in the Bush administration were true believers who brushed aside any uncertainties they came across because everyone was certain that Saddam was basically up to no good WMD-wise and was at least a latent threat to US interests. They pushed the paltry evidence for this beyond its bounds to sell the war and scare the American public into supporting them, but they honestly believed it was true. Unfortunately for everyone, everyone was wrong. We rightfully should expect more from our leaders and they failed us.
By this interpretation, Tenet did not believe that intelligence was being fixed. It was being marshaled to support a justifiable policy goal; the problem was the evidence was weak and had to be dressed up a bit, but that didn't mean it was untrue. Tenet's Brit counterpart, however, looked at this and concluded that Tenet and company were putting the intelligence info into Photoshop and erasing the flaws. And then he responded with a condescending smile, flashing his bad teeth at Tenet, and quickly wrote up this memo before proceeding to the nearest pub to chat about fut ball with his mates.
I don't know which interpretation is right. The only way to answer this is for Congress to finally investigate what Bush and company did with their intelligence. Was there intentional mendacity or were they just fools who should have questioned their zealous beliefs? I'd be really interested in finding this out, as would I'm sure much of the American public.
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UPDATE:
Want to know when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is going to investigate the Administration's use of intelligence? Call Pat Roberts, Chairman, at 202-224-4774 or email him here.
Feel free to remind the senator of what he said on MSNBC:
I'm perfectly willing to do it, and that's what we agreed to do, and that door is still open...so we will get it done, but it seems to me that we ought to put it in some priority of order, and after we do get it done I think everybody's going to scratch their head and say, 'OK, well, that's fine. You know, let's go to the real issue.'Senator, that is the real issue.
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