In defense of intelligence

     I hate to write this article; long I have sought to see the demise of the FBI, the CIA, and, in the Clinton years, the DEA. It used to be one of the rare issues that I looked at and agreed with liberals: our country has no business formulating agencies trying to destroy other governments or the freedom of our own citizens.  I ask the question: would we be better off not having these agencies at all?
     But my article today is not along this plotline at all; instead it is supportive of the intelligence, particularly of the CIA, concerning Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Today it is common truth that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Virtually all commentators say that the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction was wrong.
     But let me take the opposing view here and actually support agencies whose history I despise. We know that Saddam refused entry for UN inspectors for years. We know that while the UN inspectors were left at the front gate, trucks lined up and something was loaded on those trucks before the UN inspectors were allowed into the facility. We know that this happened over and over, and we know there were weapons which Saddam was hiding from inspectors.
     Israel has satellite pictures which show the truck convoys going from Iraq to Syria, wherever and whatever it was that Saddam was hiding. And that is the million dollar question: what is it that Saddam was hiding? What is left in Syria now? The only mistake in intelligence that I, as an outside observer, can see is that evidently Saddam had to hide it all. We presumed he had not gotten rid of it all yet. In fact his own soldiers assumed WMDs were to be used against coalition forces, and they were surprised when Saddam informed them there were no WMDs to be used. We know this now from recently released papers and testimony from Saddam’s subordinates.
     So I think the two questions we should be better focused on are 1) what did he hide, 2) and where did he hide them? It is not as partisan hacks charge with their infamous charge: Clinton lied and nobody died. As an article I recently read so aptly put it: Important assumptions turned out wrong; but mistakenly relying on faulty intelligence is a world apart from lying about it.