Tradecraft Methodologies to Uncover Weapons for Mass Destruction in Iraq

It was on November, 2003 that Ekeus, one of the former Swedish Ambassadors to the United States of America, discussed in Irvine Auditorium the lessons that emerged from the twelve year long international efforts to uncover the WMD or the weapon for mass destruction in Iraq. Ambassador Rolf Ekeus who happens to be the first Executive Chairman of the Unite Nations Special Commission on Iraq, often referred to as UNSCOM, also addressed the Monterey Institute of International Studies regarding the tradecraft methodologies that were used for detecting as well as assessing the weapon programs of Iraq.

The mission of the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq or UNSCOM after the end of the Gulf War was to account for as well as to eliminate even the slightest possibilities of Iraq’s possessing prohibited weapons. The entire process took into account the combination of intelligence collection and on- site inspections. According to Ekeus, The backbone of the entire responsibilities of the UNSCOM was the inspections and the inspection methodologies. On the other hand, the inspectors who were carrying out the services of doing the inspection works said that the entire tradecraft methodology that was being used for the purpose was tracing the weapons for mass destructions in Iraq required to be developed to a large extent. Especially, the necessity for the development in the sources of the reliable and valuable intelligence was quite obvious.

Let us not evaluate the performance of the Intelligence Community in their task of assessing the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons activities in Iraq. The National Intelligence Council had produced an NIE or National Intelligence Estimate in October in the Year of 2002 since it was so requested by the members of Congress. The estimate came to reveal that Iraq was in its process of reconstituting its nuclear weapons and other weapons for mass destruction. But it is quite strange that the exhausted study of the Iraq Survey Group stated that the assessment or the NIE was almost completely wrong. According to the NIE, the biological weapons capability of Iraq was far more developed and advanced than they had been before the Gulf War. It also concluded that Iraq had the possession of the production facilities for mobile biological weapons. It also has been proved to be wrong.

There is, in fact, a long list that includes the claims in the NIE that ultimately emerged as false. For instance, the National Intelligence Community had stated that the production of Chemical along with sarin, VX, mustard and GF was renewed in Iraq. What is even more interesting is the fact that National Intelligence Community went to the extent of stating that Iraq had already accumulated a chemical stockpile that amounted to 100 metric tons to 500 metric tons. Even this information in the NIE was proved to be wrong. National Intelligence Community also came to the conclusion that Iraq possessed unmanned aerial vehicles that were intended to serve the purpose of delivering the ballistic missiles and the biological weapons. According to the National Intelligence Community, the ranges of these unmanned aerial vehicles were much greater than the 150 kilometer range as permitted by the United Nations. However, though there were aerial vehicles in Iraq that had the capability of traveling more than a range of 150 kilometers, they were not actually intended to be used for delivering the weapons for mass destructions or WMD such as the biological weapons (Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States, March 31, 2005).

Now, that the assertions of the National Intelligence Community in their NIE have been proved to be wrong in most of the cases, there were frequent rising of questions about why the estimate of the National Intelligence Community had included such wrong information. Though some of the defenders of the National Intelligence Community opine that the errors revealed in the NIE were caused due to the haste in the few months in the year of 2002, within which the NIE was prepared. However, the fact remains that most of the fundamental mistakes were committed as well as communicated to the policymakers much before the NIE had been produced. Therefore, it is quite evident that there was much time for the errors in the NIE to be corrected. But they were not corrected even before the war broke out.

The very first thing that is assumed out of the failure of the National Intelligence Community is that the Community does not have the ability to analyze and disseminate the information that it is unaware of. The NIE was totally crippled by its failure to collect the meaningful information about the programs of weapons for mass destruction in Iraq. The second that can be assumed is the fact that the National Intelligence Community badly suffered from lack of efficient analysts and genuine intelligence (Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States, March 31, 2005). It is also quite amazing that the collectors also failed to learn lessons from the behavior and intensions of Iraq in the past.

In this regard it would be quite relevant to mention that the pre-war assessment of the National Intelligence Community before the Gulf War failed to identify most of the chemical weapons storage sites in Iraq. When this led to a major issue after the Gulf War was over, the National Intelligence Community were determined not to commit such mistakes again. But in reality they did not prove have lived up to their determination. What are the basic reasons that played key roles in National Intelligence Community committing the blunders in the NIE or the estimate of the weapons for mass destruction in Iraq?

Poor target development is one of the factors ultimately led the National Intelligence Community to produce such an estimate that was typically characterized by errors and misconceptions. The problem was that the Intelligence faculty of the community could not get their intelligence concentrate on the issues that were most cared about. There can be no denial to the fact that the traditional collection devices that the individual collection agencies resort to have lost most of their efficiencies, especially in the context of the modern world. Considering the advancement that the modern world is characterized, a successful penetration of the hard targets is always the results of the innovation collection techniques or the assimilation of extremely creative collection capabilities. The fact remains that the National Intelligence Community has not yet developed the long term collection strategies as a result of which the very target development of the Community was too poor.

Poor analysis by the intelligence faculty of the National Intelligence Community is one of the reasons for the errors that the Community showed up in the NIE or in the estimate about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which they produced in October in 2002. In their Report to the President, March 31, 2005, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States stated that the scope as well as the quality of analysis had eroded badly in the National Intelligence Community. The Commission is also offers the suggestion that the Intelligence Community requires to restore the qualityof the analysis faculty. Though analysis is a matter of training as well as of tradecraft, it is also definitely as matter of expertise that the intelligent analysis of the National Intelligence faculty are always expected to have.

The errors that the National Intelligence Community have made in their NIE makes it clear that the way in which the analysts in the Community thought, researched, wrote, communicated and evaluated the evidences requires to be modified a lot so that the analytic tradecraft of the Community is strengthened to a larger extent. There are a number of instances, as the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States reveals, where the finished intelligence by the Community was found to be very much ill supported, loosely reasoned and poorly communicated. There were also a number of analytic products in the NIE that made it quite hard to understand how much knowledge the National Intelligence Community had about an issue and how much their conclusions were dependent on assumptions and inference. The analysts in the Community should have understood that the decision makers would be much confident on the intelligence that they receive from them. It is expected of the analysts that they would admit what they are unaware of.

It as already been stated that though analysis if a matter of good tradecraft, it also requires much of expertise on part of the members of the Community. A number of areas have been identified where the level of expertise of the National Intelligence Community was too below the level that it should maintain. There are a number of wrong assessments that have been the results of failures in the technical analysis. It is also quite obvious that the assessments that have tested wrong also owe to the failure to understand the core technologies related to the weapons, especially the ones for mass destruction. It is, therefore, quite obvious that technical expertise, especially in the fields related to the weapons is quite necessary for the perfect analysis of the evidences that the National Intelligence Community had collected.

Lack of political context has also been found to be one of the reasons for the failure of the Community’s proper assessment of the possession of Weapons for mass destruction by Iraq. The analysis, as revealed by the National Intelligence Community, contains an extensive technical analysis of the suspected WMD programs in Iraq. On the contrary, there was little amount of serious analysis of the social as well as political situations in Iraq. Everybody would be quite unanimous over that fact that in a country like Iraq where dictatorship is the ruling force, the motives or the intensions of the Iraqi leaders is a must for the analysis to take into account. Had they done such kind of analysis, it would have been much easier to understand the intensions and motifs of Saddam Hussein. Had any one of the members of the National Intelligence Community been concerned about the socio-political situations in Iraq, the assessment that they had produced might have been much closer to the truth and reality. The drawback of the National Intelligence Community that comes to be quite obvious here is lack of imagination. Therefore, it may be concluded that the tendency of the Community to demark between regional analysis and technical analysis, and stressing on the later more and ignoring the earlier has led them to make mistakes in making the assessments that they have produced.

Another potential reason that played a very important role in the errors being committed in the NIE that the National Intelligence Community had produced in October in 2002, is overemphasis on the daily intelligence products but underperformance in the utilizing them in the most creative and effective way. The intelligences products that the policymakers as well as the members of the National Intelligence Community had received from the President’s Daily Brief or PDB or from the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief or SEIB that were distributed widely, were ‘more alarmist and less nuanced than the NIE’, so far as the opinion of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States is concerned. With their headlined that could hardly miss the attention of any reasonable person, the PDBs and the SEIBs had left a remarkable impression in many of the corroborating reports, while there were only a few reliable sources for such intelligence. The problem that happened with the policymakers and the analysts in the National Intelligence Community is that the intelligence that suggested the existence of WMD or weapons for mass destruction in Iraq was duly conveyed to the policymakers, while the information that was published later and suggested doubt in the validity of the intelligence provided earlier, hardly reached them. As a result, the policymakers made an assessment of the entire phenomenon on the basis of incomplete intelligence.

Inadequate information sharing is another reason that has accounted for the blunders committed by the policymakers as well as the analysts of the National Intelligence Community. There is, in fact, no scope for doubt that sharing of information has substantially improved since September 11. Again it has also to be taken into account that there is a long span of time between the attacks by Al Qaeda and the production of the reports by the National Intelligence Community. The irony is that the sharing of information had not spread to the other areas, especially in counterproliferation, a field where sharing of information is an essential necessity.

So far as the context of counterterrorism is concerned, the sharing of information or intelligence is much dependent on the personal relationships as well as co-location, as opposed to communitywide information networks that are typically characterized by integrity. The problem with the matter of sharing of information at the personal level is that the agencies or the individual departments act as if the information that they collect are their properties. Much of information that is termed as ‘operational’ by the FBI or the CIA is hardly shared, despite the fact that the analysts have repeatedly stressed on the importance of information sharing. And, it is quite needless to mention that lack of sharing of information testifies to the fact that extensive work has not been attempted in the process of assessing the possibility the existence of WMD or Weapons for mass destruction in Iraq.

Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States has also identified poor human intelligence as one of the factors that played a vital role in the failure of proper assessment of the possibility of existence of WMD in Iraq. When the NIE was developed in October 2002, the United States had too poor human intelligence on the Weapons for mass destruction programs in Iraq. Neither was there any enlightenment on the leadership intensions which is very important. It has to be admitted that the old approaches to human intelligence is not enough, considering the advancement that information technology has achieved in the modern times. It has also to be understood that the countries that dare to threaten the United States, is no doubt adequately aware of the modus operandi of the human intelligence services. Naturally, they do have the comprehensive idea about how to counter it.

Lack of human intelligence is definitely one of the factors that impair the assessment of the possibility of Iraq’s possessing WMD by National Intelligence Community. Even the worse is the wrong human intelligence or the human source that lies. It has been revealed by the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States that “the Community's position on Iraq's biological weapons program was largely determined by sources who were telling lies--most notably a source provided by a foreign intelligence service through the Defense Intelligence Agency” (Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States, March 31, 2005). It is also quite strange that the National Intelligence Community was not able to find out that the information found is nothing but lies. Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States had also pointed to this fact as its Report to the President reads, “That the NIE (and other reporting) didn't make clear to policymakers how heavily it relied on a single source that no American intelligence officer had ever met, and about whose reliability several intelligence professionals had expressed serious concern, is a damning comment on the Intelligence Community's practices”.

The declining utility of traditional imagery intelligence against the weapon program that is characteristically unconventional is also one of the important reasons for the crippled assessment produced by the National Intelligence Community. The most ironic fact is that the imagery collection systems intended specially to work against the Russian Military did not serve well against Iraq, considering the unconventionalism that characterized the WMD programs of Iraq. There is nothing unnatural about it since it cannot be expected that such imagery collection system that is meant for one particular purpose would offer perfect service in other fields or atmosphere. It has also to be taken under consideration that there almost none of the traditional imageries that can enlighten the experts or the policymakers about the biological or the chemical facilities. The chemical weapon programs or the biological weapon programs can well be housed in the commercial buildings, generating the least suspicion in the mind of any one. This fact indicates that even if lots of photos and other evidences of chemical factories are found, the intelligence about the chemical weapon programs still remains unknown.

Another problem that contributed to the contributed to the misconception of the National Intelligence about the existence of WMD or weapon for mass destruction in Iraq, is the absence of a strong leadership. There was a conflict between the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center or CTC and the Terrorist Threat Integration Center that is now referred to as NCTC, regarding the presidential direction. The issues that were the reasons for the two associations falling out with each other were roles, resources and responsibilities. The intelligence reform act might have ended this conflict between the two communities. Since the National Intelligence has also had to fight with the powerful agencies. Therefore, strong leadership had played a great role in misleading the National Intelligence Community. Gregory F. Treverton and C. Bryan Gobbard says in their Assessing the Tradecraft Intelligence Acarote that “though Leadership commitments regarding data ownership and sharing seem shallow are issue that does warrant further evaluation”

Now that we have discussed the reasons that led the National Intelligence Community to have as well as reveal the wrong assessment of Iraq’s chance of possessing WMD or weapons for mass destruction, it is also very easy to have a comprehensive idea about how these mistakes could be avoided. The overview of the reasons also indicates a fact that none of the factors seem to be something that could not be helped, though some of the problems were really quite critical.

Sources

1. Report to the President, March 31 2005
2. National Security Research Dvision, Gregory F. Treverton and C. Bryan Gobbard, Page:41

How Alexander Pope Would Have Appreciated Lord Byron’s 'She Walks in Beauty'

She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron happens to be one of those poems that have often been regarded with great honor and appreciation by critics. Alexander Pope, one of the greatest 18^th century poets had some views about good writing. It is necessary to mention in this regard that his concept about ‘good writing’ was valued beyond measure in his time and is so even now. Let us now make an attempt to analyze how Alexander Pope with all his unique concepts about perfect writing and perfect poetry would have appreciated She Walks in Beauty by Byron.

Pope is typically characterized by his fondness for wit and satire. Any literary work that makes a sophisticated use of wit and satire must please him. Most amazingly She Walks in Beauty is such a poem that has no space for wit or satire or witty sarcasm. It is typically characterized by a splendid description of the beauty of a woman and appreciation for it. This might have frustrated Pope beyond measure.

In most of the cases Alexander Pope, as revealed by his works including the poems and the criticisms, was deeply involved with the social issues, especially the social snobbery and hypocrisy that characterized the eighteenth century society. He, therefore, might have been quite amazed as well as frustrated out of the fact that some poet is wasting his talent by trying to analyze if “One shade the more, one ray the less,/ Had half impair’d the nameless grace” of the lady.

She Walks in Beauty clearly appears to have reflected the Platonic concept of beauty. It harbors the idea that the external beauty is the reflection of the inner goodness and the mental purity of a person. There is much doubt if Pope would have appreciated this, considering the practical and satiric attitude that he had and projected through almost all his literary works. The way he has satirized the 18^th century ladies in The Rape of the Lock for their spending so much of time before the mirror, it can be apprehended that Pope might have felt disgusted with a poet watching a woman minutely enough to notice the ‘soft’ ‘cheek’, ‘calm’ ‘brow’ and the ‘tints that glow’.

Isn’t there, then, anything in Byron’s She Walks in Beauty that Pope would have liked and appreciated? One who can say “To err is human, to forgive, divine” (Alexander Pope, Ibid) might have excused Byron for his error, as he might have thought. Again, who can say if Pope might have been too happy with Byron to find the minuteness with which he observed the lady and could describe her beauty with the subtlest details, applying his own poetic and philosophic insight? It is to be kept in mind that the Pope’s appreciation would not have been inspired by the description of the beauty but by the fact that Byron has observed a human being, since in his Essay on Man he himself said, “The proper study of mankind is man”.

There are, of course, other reasons for which Pope would have loved Byron’s She Walks in Beauty. One of the principal reasons is the clarity with which the beauty of the lady has been described. Pope advocated ‘wit’ saying, “True wit is nature to advantage dress’d; / What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed”. It gives a clear indication that thought being perfectly and expressed through words was the objective for while ‘wit’ was the instrument to attain the goal. Had he found Byron expressing his thoughts ‘so well’ he just could not but have showered appreciation.

What is to be marked specially is the fact that type of imagery that Byron has used in She Walks in Beauty, perfectly matches with the romantic tone and theme of the poem. The diction is also characterized by a certain degree of tenderness that is quite prevalent in the mood of the poem, resulting in the coherence among diction, mood and tone being maintained. Even the dominance of Iambic Tetrameter offers the perfect rhythm for the poem, considering its lyric feature. The ‘ababab’ rhyme scheme seems to echo the simplicity as well as musicality that are the major characteristics of this poem. Pope could not have helped appreciated this poem for all these reasons since he himself had treated all these factors with due care and, of course, perfection. Pope’s act of using epic similes and the epic tone along with the Heroic Couplet in The Rape of the Lock in order to add to the sense of mockery can be cited for instance.