RE: From a wargames Usenet

From: Elena Dent <debadger_at_pacbell.net_at_hypermail.org>
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 20:50:50 -0700

It looks like Bush Jr. had his sights on whupping Sadam's ass, come what
may, from the moment he got into office. The cynic in all of us looks at
him and says he wants revenge on Sadam for making his daddy look bad. All
the evidence shown to the world (which may not be all of it) points to
trumped up Weapons of Mass Destruction. We know at some point he had them
because our dear government SOLD them to him. Maybe that's the "proof" the
President didn't want to show to the public.

Where are they now? Dunno; scary thought isn't it. One hopes that they were
inferior and self destructed, complex technology tends to do that. Some
were used on the Kurds, that's known. There were jets found buried in the
sand, maybe the weapons were mostly dismantled and destroyed as well.
Remember that fabulous set of photos on the Internet a while ago, a tanker
was stopped, inspected and found to hold a pallet of gold. Or was it? The
stuff may well have been gold painted lead, since the ingots were rough.
Were the WMD a similar con game? Sadam using them to appear badder-ass than
he was and his poor scientists fervently asserting they exist so they didn't
die horribly.

The difficult thing about intelligence is that it's so nebulous. I've read
a book by John Keegan who makes a strong case for the fact that while you
should not ignore intelligence it is never the one conclusive silver bullet.
Your information might not get where it should in a timely manner, it might
not be interpreted correctly, it may be incomplete. Or it might be complete,
accurate and timely but your boss doesn't want to hear it. Or several
agents really genuinely believe something's wrong, they look for and find
information backing their belief and send it on in all honesty only ... they
failed to see other clues that didn't agree with their theory. And every
step up the chain of intelligence command there is sifting, sorting, trying
to find a pattern. And of course there usually are several interpretations
to the facts as they unfold.

Say you're a field agent, you know Sadam's up to SOMETHING, he's dangerous,
and your boss really REALLY wants information that would take him down. You
hate the guy, your informants hate the guy (with very good reason). You
agree, it's your job of course, but you genuinely agree with your boss.
What do you do? You do what your boss tells you (find me information on
this bastard's WMD) Your informants have lost friends and family to Sadam's
rampages, they're sure he's got them. His scientists insist they've got
them and if you smuggle them and their families out of the country they'll
be sure to give you what you want.

Now say you live in Iraq. You work in one of the top weapons facilities.
Any day now, as tensions get higher, your weapons might be called upon.
What if there are none? What if some of them do exist, they're used, Iraq
loses and you get invaded. Who's gonna get blamed? Now this guy comes out
of the shadows and offers the possibility of safety for your family and you
IF you give him enough useful information. What do you do? Of course you
inflate what you've got, it's human nature.

Now we've got this massive juggernaut rolling through Iraq. Our national
prestige IS on the line. If we fail, we make fools of ourselves. And there
are a lot of people, all over the world who would like to see the US taken
down a peg or three. They might not want us destroyed, but they are getting
very tired of living with the 500 lb gorilla. We see a lot of vivid
vignettes, good and bad. We hear the body count, of course. We hear
feel-good stories, often through the Internet. A friend of mine's brother
in law is serving there now. His unit's working on local PR, of course, as
well as the usual security jobs and he's asked for and gotten school
supplies (paper, pencils, little stuff) for the kids there and the response
from the locals is good. I submit there is a lot of little, genuine good
happening there that could grow if we don't make any more stupid mistakes
like AbuGrabe. It looked to this outsider like very rough hazing. Very
much like frat boys will do and it got out of hand. But kids have been known
to die in hazing incidents and that more than crosses the line to criminal
behavior.

Elena
Received on 2005-08-24 20:50:50