Iraq intelligence failures

There certainly has been a lot of buzz about how the intelligence on Iraq was wrong. My view is that the critics are trying to have it both ways. on one hand, people are after the intelligence community for failing to pick up the signals about 9/11. There is a mountain of ambiguous intelligence data they sort through all the time. Pre-9/11 they probably were less aggressive about the analysis and didn't assume the worst case scenario.

Post 9/11, now the analysis tends to be different. They may assume more danger from data that is less clear. I knew that was going to happen when they announced the whole red/orange/yellow alert system post 9/11. No government official would hold back on releasing possible threat data. Nobody wants to have another 9.11 incident while the country is on "yellow" alert.

So in regards to Iraq, there were piles of ambigous data and pre-9.11 the intelligence community might not have assumed the worst possible scenarios. But after 9/11 there was no way in the world these intelligence people were going to risk getting caught off guard again.

Another issue that needs to be addressed is whether the Iraqis are better off without the Baathist regime or not? On the basis of their oppression of the people, would critics prefer that Hussein remain in power right now?

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