ARTICLE: 'Assessments Made in 2003 Foretold Situation in Iraq: Intelligence Studies List Internal Violence, Terrorist Activity,' By Walter Pincus, Washington Post, May 20, 2007; Page A06

There are always intell reports that explore all potential downsides. Their existence proves nothing, because that's intell's job: list me the bad things that can happen if I do this, or if I don't do this.

It's like the surgeon telling you before the op about all possible complications. Their potentiality is but one element to be calculated in your decision.

That's why this notion of "faulty intell" is all wrong. It's not how intell works. You get a range of potential outcomes (inevitably, all worst case) and then you make your call.

The presumption of "good" or "bad" intell can't really be proven per se. Some always ends up being "amazingly prescient," the rest is a load of hyperbolic crap.

When things work out, no one cares about all the "bad" intell. But when it goes badly (always for a host of reasons and decisions, or simply because the decisionmakers prefer the sub-optimal outcome to no action at all), then the "amazingly prescient" intell is inevitably touted as "proof" of the intell "failure" (I made this argument first in PNM).

Also inevitably, there will be calls for "reform," none of which can possibly overcome this essentially political decisionmaking process, nor will it stop the very same politicians from declaring their pet defense programs "crucial" because "we live in a world of COMPLETE UNCERTAINTY!"

In short, no president can be "controlled" or "corrected" by perfect intelligence--a useless concept if ever there was one.

Bush and Cheney made their decisions. Until the casualties began piling up ("high" by today's standards, marginal by yesterday's), their decisionmaking was supported--in poll after poll and congressional vote after vote--by the clear majority of Americans and their leaders. Once the bodies piled up and a sense of non-progress ensued, a clear majority turned against those decisions--and those decisionmakers.

That's just how it works in our political system.

So the real correction is--duh!--get the casualties down, not "fix intell."

Iraq stopped being a binary outcome a long time ago. Kurdistan is where we've won, and Kurdistan is where we'll manage to define a partial victory, reduce our exposure and casualties by concentrating the bulk of our troops there, and continue to sequence the rest of Iraq toward something better over time (back to Hoagland and Friedman--and me for two-plus years now--on engaging Iran and keeping this Big Bang strategy alive).

For some, it will always be solely about kinetics and the intell that justifies it.

To others, it'll always be a mix, a sequence, a balance.

The former is a strategy all right, just not a grand one.

And no amount of good intell will overcome that mindset.