The Politics of Intelligence and American Wars with Iraq

The Politics of Intelligence and American Wars with Iraq PDF Author: O. Seliktar
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230610404
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Coming at the heels of September 11, Operation Iraqi Freedom has focused the limelight on the way in which the United States predicts and manages political change. The failure to find WMD and more important, the continued violence in Iraq instead of the hoped for democracy, has engender an acrimonious debate on the motives of the Bush administration and its uses or misuses of intelligence. The question of who got what right or wrong has been fought out along ideological, and partisan lines, with supporters claiming that, given what was known about Saddam Hussein, the decision to change his regime was justified and detractors arguing that a group of largely Jewish neoconservatives, acting on behalf of Israel, manipulated intelligence in order to trick the United States into an unnecessary and costly war. The book provides a systematic and objective analysis of the problems that faced American intelligence in deciphering the behavior of the highly secretive and confusing Iraq regime and its enigmatic leader.

The Politics of Intelligence and American Wars with Iraq

The Politics of Intelligence and American Wars with Iraq PDF Author: O. Seliktar
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230610404
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Get Book

Book Description
Coming at the heels of September 11, Operation Iraqi Freedom has focused the limelight on the way in which the United States predicts and manages political change. The failure to find WMD and more important, the continued violence in Iraq instead of the hoped for democracy, has engender an acrimonious debate on the motives of the Bush administration and its uses or misuses of intelligence. The question of who got what right or wrong has been fought out along ideological, and partisan lines, with supporters claiming that, given what was known about Saddam Hussein, the decision to change his regime was justified and detractors arguing that a group of largely Jewish neoconservatives, acting on behalf of Israel, manipulated intelligence in order to trick the United States into an unnecessary and costly war. The book provides a systematic and objective analysis of the problems that faced American intelligence in deciphering the behavior of the highly secretive and confusing Iraq regime and its enigmatic leader.

The Politics of Intelligence and American Wars with Iraq

The Politics of Intelligence and American Wars with Iraq PDF Author: O. Seliktar
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781349372232
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Coming at the heels of September 11, Operation Iraqi Freedom has focused the limelight on the way in which the United States predicts and manages political change. The failure to find WMD and more important, the continued violence in Iraq instead of the hoped for democracy, has engender an acrimonious debate on the motives of the Bush administration and its uses or misuses of intelligence. The question of who got what right or wrong has been fought out along ideological, and partisan lines, with supporters claiming that, given what was known about Saddam Hussein, the decision to change his regime was justified and detractors arguing that a group of largely Jewish neoconservatives, acting on behalf of Israel, manipulated intelligence in order to trick the United States into an unnecessary and costly war. The book provides a systematic and objective analysis of the problems that faced American intelligence in deciphering the behavior of the highly secretive and confusing Iraq regime and its enigmatic leader.

Intelligence and national security policymaking on Iraq

Intelligence and national security policymaking on Iraq PDF Author: James Pfiffner
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526130963
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
The decision to go to war in Iraq has had historic repercussions throughout the world. The editors of this volume bring together scholarly analysis of the decision-making in the U.S and U.K. that led to the war, inside accounts of CIA decision-making, and key speeches and documents related to going to war. The book presents a fascinating case study of decision-making at the highest levels in the United States and Britain as their leaders planned to go to war in Iraq. Just as the Cuban Missile Crisis has been used for decades as a case study in good decision-making, the decision to go to war in Iraq will be analysed for years to come for lessons about what can go wrong in decisions about war. The book presents a fascinating and truly comparative perspective on how President Bush and Prime Minister Blair took their countries to war in Iraq. Each had to convince his legislature and public that war was necessary, and both used intelligence in questionable ways to do so. This book brings together some of the best scholarship and most relevant documents on these important decisions that will reverberate for decades to come.

The War on Truth

The War on Truth PDF Author: Neil Mackay
Publisher: Casemate Publishers and Book Distributors
ISBN: 9781932033625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
The War on Truth investigates all aspects of the lead up to the war in Iraq, its execution, and its aftermath. Neil MacKay contends that the public was systematically fed untruths in a manner that questions what kind of democracy we really have. MacKay, award winning investigative journalist for Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper has covered the West's intelligence agencies for many years. In this book he questions why 'intelligence' missed 9/11 and why the best funded intelligence networks in history got things so badly wrong. The WMD debate is also covered. MacKay's extensive contacts in the intelligence community make a telling contribution to this investigation and we see an intimate picture of how intelligence is gathered, how it is interpreted and why things go wrong. We also gain an insight to Neo-Cons, the radical think tank that surround George W. Bush and some of whom stated before 9/11, that the US "needed another Pearl Harbor" to condition the American people (and their allies) into supporting war against Saddam Hussein. Author Neil MacKay is a three-times finalist as British Reporter of tile Year in the British Press Awards, Britain's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. MacKay revealed the identity of the Omagh bomber, exposed the British Army colonel who used loyalist terrorists as proxy assassins throughout the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland and unmasked "Stakeknife", the highest-ranking British army spy inside the IRA. His investigations into the war on terror and the invasion of lraq have won international acclaim. More than 200,000 US readers regularly turn to his stories on the internet every Sunday. In 1999, MacKay famously wrote an article based on briefings with CIA operatives in Pakistan that reported that aI-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden planned to use planes to attack mainland America. He has appeared on TV and radio regularly as a commentator in the UK, France. Italy. Japan. America. Canada, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and throughout the Middle East. John Pilger: "Neil's masterly and prodigious scoops are the stuff of newspaper legend" Truthout.org: "the gold standard of investigative journalists"

Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan PDF Author: Beth Bailey
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479836265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2016 Investigates the causes, conduct, and consequences of the recent American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Understanding the United States’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is essential to understanding the United States in the first decade of the new millennium and beyond. These wars were pivotal to American foreign policy and international relations. They were expensive: in lives, in treasure, and in reputation. They raised critical ethical and legal questions; they provoked debates over policy, strategy, and war-planning; they helped to shape American domestic politics. And they highlighted a profound division among the American people: While more than two million Americans served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many in multiple deployments, the vast majority of Americans and their families remained untouched by and frequently barely aware of the wars conducted in their name, far from American shores, in regions about which they know little. Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan gives us the first book-length expert historical analysis of these wars. It shows us how they began, what they teach us about the limits of the American military and diplomacy, and who fought them. It examines the lessons and legacies of wars whose outcomes may not be clear for decades. In 1945 few Americans could imagine that the country would be locked in a Cold War with the Soviet Union for decades; fewer could imagine how history would paint the era. Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan begins to come to grips with the period when America became enmeshed in a succession of “low intensity” conflicts in the Middle East.

Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy

Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy PDF Author: Paul R. Pillar
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231527802
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
A career of nearly three decades with the CIA and the National Intelligence Council showed Paul R. Pillar that intelligence reforms, especially measures enacted since 9/11, can be deeply misguided. They often miss the sources that underwrite failed policy and misperceive our ability to read outside influences. They also misconceive the intelligence-policy relationship and promote changes that weaken intelligence-gathering operations. In this book, Pillar confronts the intelligence myths Americans have come to rely on to explain national tragedies, including the belief that intelligence drives major national security decisions and can be fixed to avoid future failures. Pillar believes these assumptions waste critical resources and create harmful policies, diverting attention away from smarter reform, and they keep Americans from recognizing the limits of obtainable knowledge. Pillar revisits U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War and highlights the small role intelligence played in those decisions, and he demonstrates the negligible effect that America's most notorious intelligence failures had on U.S. policy and interests. He then reviews in detail the events of 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, condemning the 9/11 commission and the George W. Bush administration for their portrayals of the role of intelligence. Pillar offers an original approach to better informing U.S. policy, which involves insulating intelligence management from politicization and reducing the politically appointed layer in the executive branch to combat slanted perceptions of foreign threats. Pillar concludes with principles for adapting foreign policy to inevitable uncertainties.

Why Intelligence Fails

Why Intelligence Fails PDF Author: Robert Jervis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801457610
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The U.S. government spends enormous resources each year on the gathering and analysis of intelligence, yet the history of American foreign policy is littered with missteps and misunderstandings that have resulted from intelligence failures. In Why Intelligence Fails, Robert Jervis examines the politics and psychology of two of the more spectacular intelligence failures in recent memory: the mistaken belief that the regime of the Shah in Iran was secure and stable in 1978, and the claim that Iraq had active WMD programs in 2002. The Iran case is based on a recently declassified report Jervis was commissioned to undertake by CIA thirty years ago and includes memoranda written by CIA officials in response to Jervis's findings. The Iraq case, also grounded in a review of the intelligence community's performance, is based on close readings of both classified and declassified documents, though Jervis's conclusions are entirely supported by evidence that has been declassified. In both cases, Jervis finds not only that intelligence was badly flawed but also that later explanations—analysts were bowing to political pressure and telling the White House what it wanted to hear or were willfully blind—were also incorrect. Proponents of these explanations claimed that initial errors were compounded by groupthink, lack of coordination within the government, and failure to share information. Policy prescriptions, including the recent establishment of a Director of National Intelligence, were supposed to remedy the situation. In Jervis's estimation, neither the explanations nor the prescriptions are adequate. The inferences that intelligence drew were actually quite plausible given the information available. Errors arose, he concludes, from insufficient attention to the ways in which information should be gathered and interpreted, a lack of self-awareness about the factors that led to the judgments, and an organizational culture that failed to probe for weaknesses and explore alternatives. Evaluating the inherent tensions between the methods and aims of intelligence personnel and policymakers from a unique insider's perspective, Jervis forcefully criticizes recent proposals for improving the performance of the intelligence community and discusses ways in which future analysis can be improved.

Shaping the Plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom

Shaping the Plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom PDF Author: Gregory Hooker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
The aftermath of the war in Iraq has generated a great deal of second-guessing regarding Washington's prewar planning and intelligence efforts. Gregory Hooker, senior intelligence analyst for Iraq at U.S. Central Command, provides a detailed narrative of the war planning process, beginning with the military's initial attempts to adjust to the new focus on regime change and closing with the government's ineffective preparation for the postwar environment.

Intelligence Wars

Intelligence Wars PDF Author: Steven K. O'Hern
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615920706
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In this revealing insider's look at the U.S. intelligence community's efforts to fight insurgencies, O'Hern, who served in Iraq in 2005, offers a critical assessment of the nation's intelligence failures and suggests ways of improving the ability to fight an often elusive enemy.

Fixing the Facts

Fixing the Facts PDF Author: Joshua Rovner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801463149
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
What is the role of intelligence agencies in strategy and policy? How do policymakers use (or misuse) intelligence estimates? When do intelligence-policy relations work best? How do intelligence-policy failures influence threat assessment, military strategy, and foreign policy? These questions are at the heart of recent national security controversies, including the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq. In both cases the relationship between intelligence and policy broke down—with disastrous consequences. In Fixing the Facts, Joshua Rovner explores the complex interaction between intelligence and policy and shines a spotlight on the problem of politicization. Major episodes in the history of American foreign policy have been closely tied to the manipulation of intelligence estimates. Rovner describes how the Johnson administration dealt with the intelligence community during the Vietnam War; how President Nixon and President Ford politicized estimates on the Soviet Union; and how pressure from the George W. Bush administration contributed to flawed intelligence on Iraq. He also compares the U.S. case with the British experience between 1998 and 2003, and demonstrates that high-profile government inquiries in both countries were fundamentally wrong about what happened before the war.