September 28, 2004

Another front of the 'war' heard from

Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, more than 120,000 hours of potentially valuable terrorism-related recordings have not yet been translated by linguists at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and computer problems may have led the bureau to systematically erase some Qaeda recordings, according to a declassified summary of a Justice Department investigation that was released on Monday. I'm "just guessing," but it looks like the Bush administration has blown it again. It's bad enough that our efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan are on life support. But we can't even get the job done on the home front, where the obstacles are not guns and grenades but bureaucracy and money. We tape 120,000 hours of conversations that may be related to terrorism – to save you the math, that's 3,000 40-hour weeks of "chatter" – and we can't get them translated. The report offered the most comprehensive assessment to date of the F.B.I.'s problems in deciphering hundreds of thousands of intercepted phone calls, conversations, e-mail messages, documents and other material that could include information about terrorist plots and foreign intelligence matters. It revealed problems not only in translating material quickly, but also in ranking the work and in ensuring that hundreds of newly hired linguists were providing accurate translations. While linguists are supposed to undergo periodic proficiency exams under F.B.I. policy, that requirement was often ignored last year, the inspector general found in the publicly released summary of its investigation. Most of the report remains classified. We collect it, then it sits around on desks or gets deleted from computers. But it's all part of a piece with this administration. When the CIA came up with a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq – i.e., an assessment of the prospects there based on the best information it was able to assemble from 15 government agencies -- President Bush said the spooks were "just guessing" about what might happen (though he later said he should have used "estimate" instead). Now it turns out that the same group that did the July assessment, which said that the best we could hope for in Iraq would be a "tentative" stability through next year, also warned the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq that war would increase the support for Islamic fanatics and result in a deeply divided Iraq. One of the reports also warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or American-led forces, saying that rogue elements from Saddam Hussein's government could work with existing terrorist groups or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare, the officials said. The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run, the officials said. What's particularly interesting about both the July intelligence estimate and now the pre-war reports, is that they've been brought to light by intelligence officials who appear to be fed up with the administration's efforts to either blame them for faulty intelligence or, more recently, make light of their findings because they don't square with the rosy picture the administration is trying to paint in the run up to Nov. 2. As conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote this week, A few hours after George W. Bush dismissed a pessimistic CIA report on Iraq as ''just guessing,'' the analyst who identified himself as its author told a private dinner last week of secret, unheeded warnings years ago about going to war in Iraq. This exchange leads to the unavoidable conclusion that the president of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war with each other. Novak makes the undeniable point that the CIA is "supposed to be a resource, not a critic, for the president." But the larger question is whether a president who pays attention only to what he wants to hear and believe, while dismissing, or actively undermining, the efforts of patrioitic Americans in government whose expertise leads them to different conclusions deserves another term in office. Does he?

Posted by tbrown at 12:23 PM

If the Dems had nominated Dean …

Peter Beinart writes in Time that the Democrats might well have been better off if they'd nominated Howard Dean for president. Remember him? Beinart's argument is that Kerry is finding it difficult to successfully differentiate himself from Bush on Iraq, the defining issue of the campaign, but that the doctor from Vermont – who was anti-war from day one – would have had no such burden. Democratic voters should stick to their day jobs. With just five weeks until Election Day, there's reason to believe they guessed wrong — that Dean would be doing better against Bush than Kerry is. Yes, it's too late for Democrats to switch horses, but imagining how Dean might have done sheds light on what's going on now. Here's the logic: Americans are upset about Iraq. Less than half of voters approve of Bush's handling of the war or say that it is going well or that it has made America safer. This frustration gives Democrats the national-security opportunity they've been waiting for. But so far, Kerry has blown it. By voting to authorize war, then criticizing it in the Democratic primaries, then saying he would have voted yes again — even if he had known that Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction — he has made his Iraq contortions, rather than the war itself, the issue. Even last week, as Kerry stepped up his attacks, Bush continued to evade them with one devastating word: flip-flop. If Dean were the nominee, flip-flops wouldn't be the issue; Iraq would. Yeah, as Yogi noted, forecasting is difficult, especially when it's about the future.

Posted by tbrown at 12:16 PM

Oil for food = money for terrorists?

Well, that's the case that some on the right are trying to make. So far, though, they lack evidence. Which is not to say that it's untrue, just unproved. To back up a bit, during the UN-imposed sanctions on Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq ostensibly was forbidden to sell oil for anything but "humanitarian" purposes, such as importing food, medicine and other essentials for the Iraqi population. The UN was to get a 2.2 percent "commission" to pay for overseeing these transactions to ensure they complied with sanctions. Since we're talking about 2.2 percent of billions of dollars here, it appears not to have taken long for corruption to set in. UN officials appear to have raked off substantial sums (though none have been charged with anything yet). Further – and here's where the reputed link to terrorism enters the picture – Saddam Hussein began cutting friendly foreigners in on the action. Those willing to shamefully lend their names to his vicious and corrupt regime, or to sell him goods in violation of the sanctions, were provided with vouchers giving them the right to specificied quantity of Iraqi crude at a below-market price. They could then turn a quick profit by selling the oil at the prevailing market price and pocket the difference. This mess has been cruising along since early this year. I touched on it in this post. Since then, events have been moving at a very UN-like pace. Which is to say, slowly. Secretary General Kofi Annan, whose role in the oil-for-food program remains murky, appointed former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker to head a special commission to investigate the program. The group, which includes other internationally prominent members, clearly has its work cut out for it. It lacks subpoena powers and faces a pile of paperwork that, by one count, may include 15 million documents (paper is one of the UN's chief work products). Meanwhile, Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which claims to be nonpartisan but is headed by neoconservative writer Clifford May, has been digging away at the available information and making connections between the oil-for-food program and some of the people and organizations who handled transactions for it. It's a tangled – and as yet inconclusive -- tale, which you can read here. The burden of it is that some of the people and groups in question had suspected terrorist connections, so Saddam may have been financing Al Qaida after all. So far, it's just another attempt to find an after-the-fact justification for the Iraq war. Will it eventually bear fruit? Beats me, but stay tuned. Congress is now investigating some aspects of the oil-for-food program and something could emerge there. Or eventually from the Volker group. A side thread to all this is that because influential officials in Russia, France and elsewhere received some of Saddam's vouchers, John Kerry's calls for closer cooperation with other nations in the war on terror are foolish because those wells were poisoned by the Iraqi dictator's money. Make of it what you will.

Posted by tbrown at 12:14 PM