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Predicting the Insurgency

The latest scoop by Knight-Ridder's Jonathan Landay and Warren Stroebel has been linked around quite a bit:

U.S. intelligence agencies repeatedly warned the White House beginning more than two years ago that the insurgency in Iraq had deep local roots, was likely to worsen and could lead to civil war, according to former senior intelligence officials who helped craft the reports.

Among the warnings, Knight Ridder has learned, was a major study, called a National Intelligence Estimate, completed in October 2003 that concluded that the insurgency was fueled by local conditions - not foreign terrorists- and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops.

The reports received a cool reception from Bush administration policymakers at the White House and the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to the former officials, who discussed them publicly for the first time.

Okay, so Rumsfeld and the people in the White House are fools. We knew that. And however wrong our intelligence agencies may have been about various things over the years, this is yet more evidence that they were always considerably less wrong than the civilians—hacks, one might call them—in the Bush administration. We've known that too.

But here's a question that doesn't really get answered in the piece. What could Rumsfeld or anyone else have actually done if they had taken the reports seriously? Was there a window of opportunity in October 2003 when the U.S. military could have shut down the Iraqi insurgency, with a change of tactics or whatnot, if only Rumsfeld had just listened to the NIE? Or was it just that the insurgency was inevitable and unstoppable and no amount of forewarning by U.S. intelligence could have changed any of that? I certainly don't know, and it's an important question, at least for those debating whether the occupation of Iraq was a catastrophe because it was a good idea that was completely bungled in the execution (as many a disgruntled hawk now believes) or because it was a bad idea that was bound to fail from the start.

Posted by Bradford Plumer on 03/01/06 at 2:35 PM | E-mail | Print | Digg this | de.licio.us

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Disgruntled hawks may believe the current situation in Iraq is the result of bungling a good idea, but Scott Ritter and others were describing the current scenario months before we invaded. Once we went into Iraq, or even long before that, once it was decided to pursue a course that would take us into Iraq, virtually no other outcome than chaos and eventual civil war was possible.
After the statue fell, and the TV people were packing up to come home, I said to my friend, "Why are they leaving? Everybody knew what was going to happen up to now. Now is when the story begins." Was I brilliant? No. I just listened to beople that knew what they were talking about, rather than to people who were obviously lying.

Posted by: Richard Hughes on 03/01/06 at 4:41 PM

This story broke some time ago. Bush was actually asked about it and responded by dimissing the intelligence as "guessing".

It is kind of interesting to see this type of material being looked at again. Perhaps this time around the responses will be scrutinized a little more seriously.

Keep up the great posts.

P.S. Complete agreement with R. Hughes (above). All one had to do to see this coming was have a 7th grade knowledge of history, been in a few fights (optional), listened to experts (mandatory), and thought for a moment (mandatory).

Posted by: AmeriPundit on 03/02/06 at 7:34 AM

The invasion of Iraq was a bad idea from the start. It was doomed to fail because of the questionable motives of the people responsible for it. It is possible that the insurgency could have been marginalized if significant effort was made to restore services and rebuild the country immediately after our invasion.

This moment was lost however, as we celebrated our "victory" and connected private contractors later engaged in what I call a "feeding frenzy" to win contracts and loot Iraq. Rebuilding efforts should have focused as much as possible on Iraqi companies to build the local ecconomy. To the extent that rebuilding has occurred at all, this was rarely the case. Though not exempt from charges of corruption, Iraqi companies should have led, as much as possible, efforts to rebuild Iraq.

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Predicting the Insurgency

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