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Published on Friday, March 7, 2008 by The Wa****ngton Post
US Officials Lean Toward Keeping Iraq Re****t Quiet
by Walter Pincus and Karen DeYoung
WA****NGTON - A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is scheduled to
be completed this
month, according to US intelligence officials. But leaders of the
intelligence community have
not decided whether to make its key judgments public, a step that caused
an uproar when key
judgments in an NIE about Iran were released in November.0307 02
The classified estimate on Iraq is intended as an update of last summer’s
*****sment, which
predicted modest security improvements but an increasingly precarious
political situation there,
the US officials said.It is meant to be delivered to Congress before
testimony in early April by
Army General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, and US
Ambassador Ryan Crocker,
according to a letter sent last week by Director of National Intelligence
Mike McConnell to
Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia.
Since the Iraq invasion in 2003, the intelligence community has been more
cautious than the
military and the White House in *****sing political, economic, and
security gains in Iraq. And
the war’s progress has been a prominent issue in the presidential
campaign.
In his letter to Warner, McConnell said that separate estimates are also
being prepared on the
“terrorist threat to the homeland” - focusing on Al Qaeda and Pakistan -
and on “the tactical
and longer-term security and political outlook for Afghanistan.” Both are
scheduled for
publication by early fall.
Warner requested all three estimates in January, describing them as key to
upcoming policy
discussions in Congress.
Intelligence officials said that the National Intelligence Board - made up
of the heads of the
16 intelligence agencies plus McConnell - will decide whether to release
the Iraq judgments once
the estimate is completed. But they made clear that they lean toward a
return to the traditional
practice of keeping such do***ents secret.
In internal guidance he issued in October, McConnell said that his policy
was that they “should
not be declassified.” One month later, however, the intelligence board
decided to publicly
release key judgments from an NIE on Iran’s nuclear weapons program,
saying that it had weighed
“the im****tance of the information to open discussions about our national
security against the
necessity to protect classified information.”
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Finally, the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 set Clausewitz on the path of
recognizing war as a
political phenomenon. Wars, as everyone knew, were fought for a purpose
that was political,
or at least always had political consequences. Not as readily apparent
was the implication
that followed. If war was meant to achieve a political purpose, everything
that entered into
war — social and economic preparation, strategic planning, the conduct of
operations, the
use of violence on all levels — should be determined by this purpose, or
at least accord
with it. Even though soldiers had to acquire special expertise, and
function in what in some
respects was a separate world, it would be a denial of reality to allow
them to carry on
their bloody work undisturbed until an armistice brought their political
employer back into
the equation. Just as war and its institutions reflected their social
environment, so every
aspect of fighting should be suffused by its political impulse, whether
this impulse was
intense or moderate. The appropriate relation****p between politics and war
occupied
Clausewitz throughout his life, but even his earliest manuscripts and
letters show his
awareness of their interaction.
The ease with which this link — always acknowledged in the abstract —
can be forgotten in
specific cases, and Clausewitz’s insistence that it must never be
overlooked, are
illustrated by his polite rejection toward the end of his life of a
strategic problem set by
the chief of the Prussian General Staff, in which every military detail of
the opposing
sides was spelled out, but no mention made of their political purpose. To
a friend who had
sent him the problem for comment, Clausewitz replied that it was not
possible to draft a
sensible plan of operations without indicating the political condition of
the states
involved, and their relation****p to each other: ‘War is not an independent
phenomenon, but
the continuation of politics by different means. Consequently, the main
lines of every major
strategic plan are largely political in nature, and their political
character increases the
more the plan applies to the entire campaign and to the whole state. A war
plan results
directly from the political conditions of the two warring states, as well
as from their
relations to third powers. A plan of campaign results from the war plan,
and frequently - if
there is only one theater of operations - may even be identical with it.
But the political
element even enters the separate components of a campaign; rarely will it
be without
influence on such major episodes of warfare as a battle, etc. According to
this point of
view, there can be no question of a purely military evaluation of a great
strategic issue,
nor of a purely military scheme to solve it.’
Everyman’s Library, 1993 ISBN: 0679420436 On war /by Clausewitz, Carl
von, 1780-1831.
Knopf, 1993. From the introduction by Peter Paret, Pg7
_____________________________________________________________________
The U-2 is a jet-powered reconnaissance aircraft specially designed to fly
at high altitudes
(i.e., above 70,000 ft [21 km]). It was used during the late 1950s to
overfly the Soviet
Union, China, the Middle East, and Cuba; flights over the Soviet Union,
the primary mission
for which the plane was designed, ended in 1960 when a U-2 flown by CIA
pilot Gary Powers
was shot down over the Soviet Union. This event was a major political
embarrassment for the U.S.
http://www.espionageinfo.com/Te-Uk/U-2-Spy-Plane.html
Soviet Prime Minister Khrushchev's reaction to the overflights which
were discovered
just before a summit conference in Paris with President Eisenhower: "It
was as though the
Americans had deliberately tried to place a time bomb under the meeting" .
. ."How could
they count on us to give them a helping hand if we allowed ourselves to be
spat upon without
so much as a murmur of protest?" The only solution was to demand a formal
public apology
from Eisenhower and a guarantee that no more overflights would take place
. . .
But the apology Khrushchev was looking for would not come. Despite
having trespassed
on the Soviet Union for the past four years with scores of flights by both
U-2's and heavy
bombers, the old general still could not say the words, it was just not in
him. . . A time
bomb had exploded, prematurely ending the summit conference. . .
Back in Wa****ngton, the mood was glum. The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee was
leaning toward holding a closed door investigation into the U-2 incident .
. . In public,
Eisenhower maintained a brave face. He "heartily approved" of the
congressional probe and
would 'of course fully cooperate,' he quickly told anyone who asked. But
in private he was
very troubled. For weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His
major concern was
that his own personal involvement in the overflights would surface,
especially the May Day
disaster. Equally, he was very worried that details of the dangerous
bomber overflights
would leak out. The massed overflight may in fact, have been one of the
most dangerous
actions ever approved by a president.
pg. 51-55 ~Body of Secrets; Anatomy of the Ultra Secret National Security
Agency
James Bamford
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of
the progress of
human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims,
have been born of
earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating,
all-absorbing, and for the time
being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does
nothing. If there is
no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and
yet depreciate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want
rain without
thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its
many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may
be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did
and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to
and you have found
out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon
them, and these will
continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
The limits of
tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the
light of these
ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the
South so long as
they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either
moral or physical.
Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly
pay for all they
get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us,
we must pay for
their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and
if needs be, by our
lives and the lives of others."
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
Frederick Douglass, 1857
- - - - - -> More political discussion continues at
http://www.politicsusaweb.com/
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