A brief note on national intelligence and its uses
There is a bit of a scrum going on currently about the recently released reports from the U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence and, particularly the report from the 9-11 Commission. There are questions about what it really says, and what it doesn't (take names). What it all means, and whether in contains any recommendations that ought to be implemented. It is a season of a national election so both reports are out there with a loose ball feel to them
Response builds over 9/11 report | csmonitor.com.
One of the current questions is whether the commission should stay around formally or informally
(Guardian) to advocate for change. They feel and obligation to see through
9/11 Families to Track Congress on Reforms (AP)..
The SCI has only issued an interim report; after November they will release another portion on the uses inadequate national intelligence was put to in the decisions to prosecute the war on terror
Even now there are attempts to spin the perception of what these reports say. To fight this debate out along the established lines (which include ad homin attacks and well timed leaks). In the last few weeks there was an odd second round of the Nigerian yellowcake affair (Plame/Wilson et al). William Safire tried to declare the administrations claims exonerated New York Times Op-Ed: Sixteen Truthful Words. The message of the day drumbeat swept up the Washington Post too The Sixteen Words, Again.
PBS took the issue up in a segment by Margaret Warner with Joseph Wilson and Sen. Kit Bond.
Online NewsHour: Dispute Continues Over Whether Iraq Sought Uranium from Niger -- July 20, 2004
The end result of all this is just a replay of this same debate from earlier in the year with no real new information involved. The British Inquiry
Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction (Butler Review) simply restated their initial information which the CIA at the time found weak, and from a single source. Joe Wilson's
trip to Niger turned up that a Iraqi delegation approached some Nigerian officials at a conference and stated they were interested in trade with Niger, but never met with them again to pursue it further. This would almost cover: the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa , without the intensifier 'significant'.
Disingenuously they claim they would have behaved differently to more direct presentation of Cautionary intelligence (when they still had this information under wraps and the press not asking questions) while continuing to ignore and fight the tale of the evidence on Iraq's relations with Weapons of Mass Destruction and Al Qaeda now in the full light of its inadequacy.
[repair - for the first 30 minutes or so this was posted there was an ill formed anchor which caused a paragraph and a half to disappear ["9/11 Families to Track Congress on Reforms" through the Safire oped link]. It is slightly more intelligible with this block intact.
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