Intelligent Intelligence Reform

With a rare and welcomed dose of humility, President Bush acknowledged this week that the information he fed the nation to build support for the war in Iraq was flawed. "It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," the President admitted. "As President, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq."

But the intelligence relied upon for the war did not "turn out" to be wrong. It was known at the time to be flawed. The claim that Iraq had attempted to obtain weapons-grade uranium in Niger was known to be based on fabricated documents, yet it made its way into the President's State of the Union address. The much cited but unproven link between Al Qaeda and Iraq was likewise based on information known to be unreliable. The source of the "credible" (Administrations word, not mine) evidence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda was a top Al Qaeda leader captured in Pakistan in 2001. After questioning by the US, this leader was sent to Egypt where he "confessed" (my word) that Al Qaeda and Iraq had worked together for training purposes. The link between Al Qaeda and Iraq was so often cited that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, a majority of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was directly involved with the September 11 terrorist attacks.

As early as February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency expressed skepticism about the Al Qaeda leader's confession, noting that Egyptian authorities were known to use harsh treatment (read: torture) to gain information. Any information so obtained, the D.I.A. reasoned, could be considered coerced and unreliable. In other words, torture can lead to flawed intelligence. The President has now acknowledged that the pre-war intelligence was faulty and he places upon his own shoulders the duty to fix it. "I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities," the President added. "And were doing just that."

Are we? As the President shifted his PR approach from repeating "victory" to accepting responsibility, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was working on behalf of the Administration to alter language in a military spending bill that would ban cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners. The provision, inserted by Senator John McCain and overwhelmingly approved in the Senate, met with resistance, including a threatened veto, from the Bush camp. Wednesday night, however, the House followed the Senate's lead and urged the negotiators to accept the bill as written rather than to include the broad exception for CIA interrogators proposed by the Administration. So rebuked by both chambers, President Bush cut his losses and agreed yesterday to the ban with only slight modification. The provision should be passed into law before the end of the year.

I applaud the Administration for acknowledging mistakes and stating an intention to undertake reforms that will prevent their repeating. However, matching such rhetoric with true reform should not be as difficult as the Administration made it in this case and the Administration's track record on matching words with action has been dismal. The Administrations reasoning in opposition to this ban was deeply flawed and led to a destructive, unending cycle: (1) Torture is leading to faulty intelligence; (2) The faulty intelligence is leading us into war; (3) The war is used as a recruiting tool to create more terrorists; (4) To combat this threat, we need better intelligence; (5) To gain that necessary intelligence, we must be allowed to torture; (6) Return to step 1 where the circle continues. Despite this flawed reasoning and despite the claim that the President wants to fix what went wrong, the Administration continued to fight Senator McCain's ban until the last moment (and may still actually be resisting, albeit less openly - House Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter has vowed to oppose the measure and tie it up in committee).

Senator McCain's triumph is a step forward. The Administration's kicking and screaming reluctance to accept this step is not encouraging. "Now we can move forward," Senator McCain stated from the oval office, where the agreement was announced, "and make sure that the world knows, as the President has stated many times, we do not practice cruel, inhumane treatment or torture." The President has indeed repeated this claim many times, but the pronouncement that the US does not torture is more credible coming from Senator McCain because he, unlike the President, has backed up his words with action. Let's hope the President can follow the Senator's lead.