Kevin Drum on Iraq Intel Deception
A summary here, which includes a link to a more comprehensive list. Soon I will stop blogging and just let Drum do it all. (See footnote 1)
Coupla stray points:
1. Re: the Curveball saga: this seems to me to be developing into a representative example of how the war was sold. There seems to have been a kind of feedback loop involving the administration and the intelligence community. The latter had a mass of conflicting information, the former picked out the info it wanted and asked for more of the same while ignoring the info it didn't want and making it clear that it didn't want any more of that kind. The intelligence community then basically responded to rewards and punishments by providing more of the kind of information that got them pats on the head and down-playing that which got them scowls and dirty looks. Close to what military types call 'incestuous amplification.'
It doesn't take simple, out-right, black-and-white lies to derail inquiry. Just being a little bit biased in favor of a certain outcome can do the same job. Being 10% biased in favor of theory T can do the same job as the outright fabrication of data when the bias is applied over and over again to every piece of evidence (and when old evidence is then re-interpreted in light of the cooked conclusion). This is why I keep preaching about intellectual honesty, and why I'm so skeptical of my own conclusions. I know I'm not perfectly objective about these matters, and I try to correct for that by looking at the evidence in new ways and carefully considering the issue even thought I'm fairly convinced. Not that I'm a paragon of intellectual honesty by any stretch of the imagination...but, as my folks used to say, do as I say, not as I do.
2. It's funny and seems accidental that our central concept concerning deception is lying. (That's an ill-formed sentence, but you know what I mean.) Outright lies are only the clearest-cut, not the most important, type of dishonesty. Suppressing one half of the available evidence is exactly as bad, IMHO, as making up evidence. That's why I urge us to consider what I'm calling, for ease and consistency of reference,
(AD) The administration deceived us
and
(AI) The administration acted irresponsibly
Rather than
(AL) The administration lied.
They apparently did lie in some cases, but in others deceived without lying. Since deception is the more relevant category here and it includes but is not limited to lying, (AD) is the more important proposition.
Footnote 1:
I'm starting to think that small, one-person blogs that don't bring in any money are going to fade into insignificance, anyway. Seems like the bigger, multi-person blogs and bloggers that get paid are going to be the wave of the future. Henry Snerd sitting in his basement stealing a few minutes online here and there while keeping his day job can't really compete with the big boys. This is not whining, I just think it's true. Hell, Drum, for example, is better that I, for example, am anyway, and blogging is an actual job for him. Anyway, if this is right blogs will still be a source for analysis and information that can't quite make it into the MSM...they'll constitute a partial democratization (or whatever it is...maybe plebi-ification?) of analysis, but not the radical democratization (or whatever it is) that we see now. On second thought, perhaps this is worrisome in that the small blogs will eventually have little to offer by way of real information or analysis, but will survive simply as rant engines for crackpots like Li'l Kim du Toit. "Rants" (may they burn in Hell) are easy; actual analysis takes time.
Just some thoughts.
As you were.
A summary here, which includes a link to a more comprehensive list. Soon I will stop blogging and just let Drum do it all. (See footnote 1)
Coupla stray points:
1. Re: the Curveball saga: this seems to me to be developing into a representative example of how the war was sold. There seems to have been a kind of feedback loop involving the administration and the intelligence community. The latter had a mass of conflicting information, the former picked out the info it wanted and asked for more of the same while ignoring the info it didn't want and making it clear that it didn't want any more of that kind. The intelligence community then basically responded to rewards and punishments by providing more of the kind of information that got them pats on the head and down-playing that which got them scowls and dirty looks. Close to what military types call 'incestuous amplification.'
It doesn't take simple, out-right, black-and-white lies to derail inquiry. Just being a little bit biased in favor of a certain outcome can do the same job. Being 10% biased in favor of theory T can do the same job as the outright fabrication of data when the bias is applied over and over again to every piece of evidence (and when old evidence is then re-interpreted in light of the cooked conclusion). This is why I keep preaching about intellectual honesty, and why I'm so skeptical of my own conclusions. I know I'm not perfectly objective about these matters, and I try to correct for that by looking at the evidence in new ways and carefully considering the issue even thought I'm fairly convinced. Not that I'm a paragon of intellectual honesty by any stretch of the imagination...but, as my folks used to say, do as I say, not as I do.
2. It's funny and seems accidental that our central concept concerning deception is lying. (That's an ill-formed sentence, but you know what I mean.) Outright lies are only the clearest-cut, not the most important, type of dishonesty. Suppressing one half of the available evidence is exactly as bad, IMHO, as making up evidence. That's why I urge us to consider what I'm calling, for ease and consistency of reference,
(AD) The administration deceived us
and
(AI) The administration acted irresponsibly
Rather than
(AL) The administration lied.
They apparently did lie in some cases, but in others deceived without lying. Since deception is the more relevant category here and it includes but is not limited to lying, (AD) is the more important proposition.
Footnote 1:
I'm starting to think that small, one-person blogs that don't bring in any money are going to fade into insignificance, anyway. Seems like the bigger, multi-person blogs and bloggers that get paid are going to be the wave of the future. Henry Snerd sitting in his basement stealing a few minutes online here and there while keeping his day job can't really compete with the big boys. This is not whining, I just think it's true. Hell, Drum, for example, is better that I, for example, am anyway, and blogging is an actual job for him. Anyway, if this is right blogs will still be a source for analysis and information that can't quite make it into the MSM...they'll constitute a partial democratization (or whatever it is...maybe plebi-ification?) of analysis, but not the radical democratization (or whatever it is) that we see now. On second thought, perhaps this is worrisome in that the small blogs will eventually have little to offer by way of real information or analysis, but will survive simply as rant engines for crackpots like Li'l Kim du Toit. "Rants" (may they burn in Hell) are easy; actual analysis takes time.
Just some thoughts.
As you were.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:00 AM
5 Comments:
Being 10% biased in favor of theory T can do the same job as the outright fabrication of data when the bias is applied over and over again to every piece of evidence (and when old evidence is then re-interpreted in light of the cooked conclusion).
Of course.
But in the Saddam situation, as with virtually everything we discuss around here, everyone avoids the burden of proof:
a)Saddam was a continuing menace
b)Saddam was effectively castrated
No one outside lone wolf Scott Ritter was willing to take the moral responsibility for b). And if Ritter was wrong, what could we do, shoot him?
If the same WMD case as a casus belli had been applied to Qaddafi, who had been reasonably well-behaved for over a decade (no mass killings of his own people, no having invaded his neighbors twice, no previous use of WMDs, no systematic evasions of inspections), I would have been comfortable with the burden of proof being cast upon a).
But as a well-reviled righty commentator has noted, history doesn't start anew with every morning's newspaper. Two decades of Saddam's continuing horror had put the burden of proof squarely on b), and there was precious little evidence of it.
Real life does not present the pristine controls of the laboratory. My disagreement has to do with the premise itself of your and Drum's truth experiment, not AD, AI, or AL. Sorry, wish I could, even for the sake of inquiry, play along.
As for your thoughts on blogging, WS, there will remain (maybe) some sort of democratization of readership.
Unlike the collapsing MSM (that's right-wing talk for "mainstream media"), there will no longer be a monopoly on what we are told and what to think about it. Jennings is dead, Brokaw's retired, and Rather put the final nail in the MSM's coffin.
Bloggers like Drum and talkers like Limbaugh put their credibility on the line every time they issue forth. If we assume for the sake of illustration that you & I are honest inquirers, we will vote with our feet, or more precisely mouse-clicking fingers. If these guys screw up like Rather did, they are dead meat in our eyes.
There will always be a place for rants, but even something rantish like Daily Kos or Hannity is vulnerable to losing their place at the public table by one key misrepresentation of fact. I dislike Atrios as much as you dislike Ann Coulter, but both are held to higher standards than politicians.
Hehe. Good.
"No one outside lone wolf Scott Ritter was willing to take the moral responsibility for b)."
Well, Powell and Rice are counterexamples, at least before b) was declared a thought-crime.
Uh, sorry, Tom, but one of us seems to have had too much turkee or something. I can't make heads or tails of your burden of proof comments.
My fault, perhaps. But nothing you say here in any way seems to touch the facts Drum presents.
I worry you may be edging toward the Method of Tenacity...
Well, let's assume the Bushies concluded that Saddam was an unreformable menace. (They had.) Deeming Curveball unreliable wouldn't prove that Saddam wasn't a menace. "Unreliable" would mean the info might still be true, but don't take it to the bank.
The question is what they sought out to prove, a) or b). You seem to hold that in order to go to war, a) should have been reproven from scratch.
That's a fair position, but not the only valid one. One does not have to reprove that termites eat houses before exterminating them.
(As for MoT, I try not to question people's methods, WS. I am tempted to do little else, believe me, but I doubt you'd like it yourself. And it is a relative of ad hominem, eh?)
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