A summary of the Carnegie report

[Vympel]

A summary of the key findings:

1. Iraq's WMD programs represented a long term threat that could not be ignored. However, they did not pose an immediate threat to the United States, the region, or global security.

2. With respect to nuclear and chemical weapons, the threat was largely known at the time

- Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled, and there was no convincing evidence of its constitution

- Regarding chemical weapons, UNSCOM had discovered that most chemical agents had lost their lethality as early as 1991. Operation Desert Storm, Desert Fox, and UN inspections and sanctions effectively destroyed Iraq's large scale chemical weapon production facilities. For both reasons, it appears that Iraq focused on preserving a latent, dual-use capability, rather than weapons production.

3. The uncertainties were much greater with regard to bioweapons, however the real threat lay in what could be produced in the future rather than what had been produced in the past or existed in the present.

- The biological weapons program may have been converted to dual use facilities designed to quickly start production in time of war, rather than making and storing these weapons in advance.

4. The missile program appears to have been the one active program in Iraq in 2002.

5. It is unlikely that Iraq could have destroyed, hidden, or sent out of the country the hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons, dozens of SCUD missiles and facilities engaged in the ongoing production of biological and chemical weapons that officials claimed were present without the United States detecting some sign of this activity before, during or after the major combat period of the war.

6. Prior to 2002, the intelligence community appears to have greatly overestimated the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, but had a generally accurate picture of the missile and nuclear programs.

7. The dramatic shift between prior estimates and the Oct 2002 NIE, together with the creation of an independent intel entity [the Office of Special Plans, since renamed] at the Pentagon suggest that the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policy makers sometime in 2002.

8. There was and is no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and Al Qaeda

9. There was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred WMD to Al Qaeda and much evidence to counter it.

10. The notion that any government would give its principle security assets to people it could not control in order to achieve its own political aims is highly dubious

11. Administration officials consistently misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and BM programs, beyond the fauls noted above, by

- treating NBC weapons as a single 'WMD' threat. The conflation of three distinct threats, very different in the danger they posed, distorted the cost/benefit analysis of the war.

- Insisting without evidence, yet treating as a given truth, that Saddam Hussein would give whatever WMD he possessed to terrorists

- Routinely dropping caveats, probabilities and expressions of doubt present in intelligence assessments from public statements

- Misrepresenting inspectors findings to turn threats from minor to dire.

12. While worst case planning is valid and vital, acting on worst case assumptions is neither safe nor wise

13. The assertion that the threat that became visible on 9/11 invalidated deterrence against states does not stand up to scrutiny

14. Saddam's responses to international pressure and internal weakness from 1991 onwards show that while unpredictable, he was not undeterrable.

15. The UN inspection process seems to have been much more successful than thought before the war. 9 months of exhaustive searches by Coalition forces suggest that the inspectors were actually in the process of finding what was there. Thus, the choice was never between war and "doing nothing about Iraq's WMD".

There's more there, I recommend anyone interested in the subject download it- the .pdf is only 1.57 megs.

[Vympel]

Just so as not to create a new thread- Kenneth Pollack created a stir with his book making the case for the invasion of Iraq. He has now done an almost complete 180, though he does not think Iraq was a strategic mistake.

the "justifications and explanations for war were at best faulty, at worst deliberately misleading"

[Vympel]

And the controversial Army War College Report criticizing the conduct of the 'war on terror' (standard disclaimer that it doesnt represent the views of the Pentagon, but an important work nonetheless, and endorsed by several of the academics at the college)

Link

[revprez]

Several academics? Don't you mean one academic? Don't you mean one academic who didn't explicitly distance himself from the report? Don't you mean you haven't read it yet?

"Bounding the Global War on Terrorism" is an academic paper penned by one guy, Jeffrey Record, who's been hopping up and down the East Coast as a Visiting Professor. It is based entirely on open source material and it's a pretty damned good read (it's only 62 pages long). If it brings attention to serious force structure issues, then it's good. If all you're looking for a rehash of the arguments in Mearshimer and Walt's "An Unnecessary War," you'll be dissappointed; Record agrees with them but he contributes nothing more. In fact, that's why this is simply a policy paper. There is no exercise, tests, or any other independent research to speak of. It is simply Record's coalescence of ideas that have been out there into a single argument--one that the Brookings Institute and the New America Foundation have called "overreach" for months.

Whether they're right or wrong is up to you (I think they're right on the substance of the problem, wrong on their assessment of the cause and prescribed solutions). On the other hand, until some real research is done how about we stop calling every policy paper that comes out a report or study?

Rev Prez