Globe and Mail

“A scathing judgment on the CIA’s reports” headlines the Globe and Mail’s other editorial for today. Globe and Mail is commenting on the US Senate Intelligence Committee’s indictment of the flawed intelligence-gathering that “provided the chief rationale for going to war” “Their bald assessment was that Iraq was awash in weapons of mass destruction – weapons, moreover, that could be supplied to terrorists.” The editorial goes on to say “There may yet be a surprise in store, but with each passing month it seems likelier that, despite the Pentagon’s best efforts to locate such weapons, none will be found.”

But when all is said and done, I have to wonder about those pesky Poles. Someone at the Globe and Mail should tell those Pesky Poles to stop collecting chemical munitions in Iraq and don’t forget to tell the Americans to stop removing radiological and nuclear materials from Iraq. That looks bad. Keep doing that and there will be no intelligence failure. Oh, and don’t forget to tell Joe Wilson that a year ago would have been a good opportunity to shut-up. The Globe and Mail should also send a memo over to the Ottawa Sun and ask them not to report whenever the Paul Martin gives a speech saying there are wmd in Iraq. It looks bad.

If the CIA was wrong in its intelligence assessment of Iraqi’s capacity for havoc and mayhem with wmd, it was not a failure that the CIA shared alone. The intelligence agencies of the entire world came to the same conclusion. Intelligence gathering is not an exact science. It operates in the dark shadowy areas in its efforts to obtain information by covert means. Since the Carter Administration the CIA has seen its human side of its intelligence gathering spiral downward. Where the CIA has been allowed to spend has been on its artificial means of gathering intelligence. Nothing can replace agents on the ground. The one thing that we did not have in Saddam’s Iraq was agents in the know and on the ground.