Intelligence Got it Right!

But those of us who were paying attention knew that, didn’t we? Here is what Walter Pincus and Karen DeYoung report for the WAPO:

Months before the invasion of Iraq, U.S. intelligence agencies predicted that it would be likely to spark violent sectarian divides and provide al-Qaeda with new opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Analysts warned that war in Iraq also could provoke Iran to assert its regional influence and "probably would result in a surge of political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups" in the Muslim world.

The intelligence assessments, made in January 2003 and widely circulated within the Bush administration before the war, said that establishing democracy in Iraq would be "a long, difficult and probably turbulent challenge." The assessments noted that Iraqi political culture was "largely bereft of the social underpinnings" to support democratic development.

More than four years after the March 2003 invasion, with Iraq still mired in violence and 150,000 U.S. troops there under continued attack from al-Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents, the intelligence warnings seem prophetic. Other predictions, however, were less than accurate. Intelligence analysts assessed that any postwar increase in terrorism would slowly subside in three to five years, and that Iraq's vast oil reserves would quickly facilitate economic reconstruction.

The report is the latest release in the Senate committee's ongoing study of prewar intelligence. A July 2004 report identified intelligence-gathering and analysis failures related to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Still pending is a study of how the administration used intelligence on Iraq in the run-up to the war.

The report was released the same day President Bush signed a $120 billion war funding bill from Congress that includes benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

In a statement attached to yesterday's 229-page report, the Senate intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), and three other Democratic panel members said: "The most chilling and prescient warning from the intelligence community prior to the war was that the American invasion would bring about instability in Iraq that would be exploited by Iran and al Qaeda terrorists."

In addition to portraying a terrorist nexus between Iraq and al-Qaeda that did not exist, the Democrats said, the Bush administration "also kept from the American people . . . the sobering intelligence assessments it received at the time" -- that an Iraq war could allow al-Qaeda "to establish the presence in Iraq and opportunity to strike at Americans it did not have prior to the invasion."

Now as someone who had read the Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence at the age of thirteen this is not exactly a “Muppet News Flash” to me. And as an avid seeker of facts it seemed quite obvious prior to October 2002. By that time all of the justifications for the illegal invasion of a sovereign country had been debunked by the experts. And the red flags were everywhere to see.

So, why exactly were they ignored? Was it ignorance, hubris or possibly O(peration) I(raqi) L(iberation), see: Iraqi Hydrocarbon Law, and those pesky benchmarks everyone is anxious to see met?

Just asking.