Intelligence And Weapons Of Mass Destruction Programs

The invasion and the war in Iraq remains a continuous topic of divisiveness and sensitivity in today’s America. One of the negative evaluation of the war is attributed to the false impression of the length of the war which lasted seven years, not six months as presumed in 2003. As the invasion initiated, the ideologies of American government then failed to perceive the large number of troops required, casualties and the financial toll in the interest of the preventive war doctrine. However, when weighing the failures of this war, there are successes brought home that relate mostly to the lessons the American military and the government learned with the use of counterinsurgency tactics after “winning the hearts and minds” of Iraqis (Young). Nevertheless, with evaluation through levels of analysis, the accomplished agenda of ending Saddam Hussein’s regime justifies success and failure, mutually.

The 1776 united States of America Declaration of Independence contain the words that succinctly describe our national objective, strategy, and message, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” In today’s United States of America, the world acknowledges American’s as the preeminent owner of individual freedoms, holding and promoting these three basic principles for some 240 years. During these years, the U.S. has employed the use of intelligence to shape its objectives and strategies, and then in times of war used the same intelligence to shape strategic messages against foreign powers. However, as hostilities decline and give way to the restoration of relative peace, the use of intelligence for strategic messages against foreign powers ceases. Under these circumstances, the void created by secession of U.S. messages, provides a communication opportunity to foreign powers for transmission of anti-U.S. messages. Attempts have been made to reinstate the offices that during war countered these anti-U.S. messages to a comprehensive reorganization of the U.S Government intelligence community. This paper does not support creation of a new agency or department to utilize existing strategic intelligence.

After World War II American intelligence had the need to be transformed. The inexperience along with bureaucracy and poor coordination among American intelligence officers obligated the United States intelligence community to change dramatically in order to confront the new challenges that emerged after the end of WWII. From Early America through WWI the intelligence system of the United States of America was involved in operations in which they had to construct intelligence systems virtually from scratch (Andrew 1995). Human intelligence was already developed, but with certain limitations and other intelligence disciplines were underdeveloped and very seldom sophisticated. After WWI America recessed and settled in a period of peace. The

Intelligence gathering and collection in the United States has significantly increased over time. This paper examines how intelligence reporting and pre-mission planning was crucial to the success of the United Nations involvement at The Battle of Inchon during the Korean War. By examining how intelligence played a role in this battle, you will be able to understand why it is important to gather and collect intelligence prior to every mission executed. Intelligence collection should be the baseline for all military operations. Inchon Landing has an ample amount of actionable intelligence; collected and disseminated appropriately we will discuss how it played a role in a low probability mission accomplishment to the last great amphibious assault in history. This paper provides detailed explanations on why The Battle of Inchon was a success and what could have been the outcome had it gone the other way.

As we have seen throughout the entire history of warfare, ancient world terrorism, political intrigue and elitist terrorism of the middle ages, and into modern terrorism, intelligence is of vital importance on both sides. Armed forces have always used intelligence of some form be it sneaking up a hill and scouting what is on the other side to the use of modern platforms such as

The 9/11 attacks opened the avenue for a scrutiny of the performance and ability of the intelligence community to detect any threats to the safety of the United States. The media, politicians, reformists and other interested parties would not comprehend how such an attack would happen without the knowledge of the intelligence community. However, it is important to consider the fact that the attack was one of its kind and could not be approached with the resources and expertise used in other initiative such as the cold war. Therefore, the need to restructure the intelligence community arose from the view that it was still operating in the mindset and spirit of the cold war even in the modern era that had seen a revolutionary change of warfare

4. What factors contributed to the U.S. intelligence failure over WMD in Iraq? If Saddam didn’t have WMD, why wasn’t he more cooperative with international inspections?

The United States (U.S) Intelligence community has come a long way since the revolutionary war. After winning independence from England, the U.S would not invest much into intelligence or foreign policy until the 20th century. Foreign policy was simply not a priority for our young nation, having an ocean on eastern and Western boarders of the country severely limited potential threats. President Franklin D. Roosevelt would be the first president since Washington to understand the importance of intelligence and lay the groundwork for what we now consider national intelligence. Unfortunately, it has taken two catastrophic failures in intelligence for the U.S to realize the need for good intelligence and take steps to improve itself. The

Detractors of the war argued that the US intelligence services provided misleading and inaccurate information about WMD. US intelligence services had miscalculated Iraqi WMD development in the 1980s and it was widely argued that they over compensated in the other direction in the 21st century. One potential explanation for such a mistake was that the CIA tended to rely on technological information rather than gather human intelligence - 'humint' - from 'assets' situated in Iraq and the Middle East. Regardless of this

As victory in WWII appeared imminent, the USAAF under General Hap Arnold commissioned studies to assess the impact of strategic bombing in the war. In addition to results about strategic bombing, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) concluded that “the U.S. should have an intelligence organization capable of knowing the strategic vulnerabilities, capabilities and intentions of any potential enemy.” In spite of the aforementioned dearth of intelligence on the USSR, very specific information was needed for military and political leaders to make decisions regarding their strengths, weaknesses, and capabilities. Additionally, the strategic bomber forces needed a list of verified targets in case conflict with the USSR broke out. In order to fill the major voids in information the US civilian leaders employed a bifurcated approach: human intelligence (HUMINT) obtained through agency operatives, and signals (SIGINT) and imagery (IMINT) intelligence acquired

In 2003, President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell launched an invasion of the nation of Iraq. United States Secretary of State Colin Powell outlined the reasons Iraq posed a threat to international security in a speech he gave at the United Nations. Iraq’s nuclear weapons program concerned the Bush administration. Fearing Iraq might use this program to act aggressively in the region, and wanting to secure oil supplies and a friendly regime, the administration pursued a plan of action to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power (FLS 2016, 43). A constant secure supply of oil stood as a cornerstone of the military-industrial complex thriving in the United States and a friendly regime in such an oil rich country remained an important objective of President Bush. This directly conflicted with the desire of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to remain in power.

Counterintelligence (CI) involves actions aimed at protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage from penetration and disruption by hostile nations or their intelligence services (Lowenthal, 2014). Three main components of Counterintelligence include collection, defensive and offensive. Collection is ability to gather intelligence information about rivalry capabilities against own nation; defensive part of CI involve measures to prevent and thwarting other nations attempts to penetration into own nations intelligence system; while offensive deal with running double agents to penetrate, manipulate, exploit, and control targeted adversaries. CI is said to be the most essential aspect of the intelligence disciplines, in the sense that collecting vast quantities of secret information and produce excellent analysis of the intelligence, but ineffective counterintelligence measures may diminish confidence the final results (Van Cleave, 2013). According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (2011) “Significant advances have been made in clarifying and rectifying intelligence gaps and requirements through the formation of liaison and working relationships with other U.S. intelligence community agencies, foreign partners, the private sector, and academia”. For instance, since 2001, FBI CI program has resulted to total arrests of 249, of which 46 of them were linked to espionage. Counterintelligence (CI)

The United States has the most capable intelligence apparatus of any country in the world. The information produced by various agencies gives the United States a substantial advantage when it comes to understanding world events, predicting and preparing for unsettled times, fielding military forces, and making a host of other political and economic decisions. From an ethical perspective, it means that the United States Intelligences information can create the risk of security for the United

After the gulf wars, a ceasefire was negotiated between the United Nations coalition and Iraq. During the ceasefire, the United Nations became aware that Iraq had started a biological warfare program in the 1980s, as well as a chemical warfare program. Upon further investigation, they found that these programs had not continued after the war. As a result, the United States main focus moving forward was the removal of the Saddam regime, their official foreign policy for years to come focused on this goal. With the suspicions that Saddam Hussein had the abilities to acquire weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration going as far as to claim he already had them, the United States and other countries began devising a plan of action. These countries strongly believed that Iraq was a treat to its neighbors and the rest of the world, and that the only solution was to invade Iraq. The United States invading Iraq in 2003 was a turning point in the reason why relationship between Iraq and the United States is the way it is today.

Abstract: In this analysis, it is shown throughout the many different agencies how the intelligence cycle is interpreted. Within each of the different agencies everyone has their own way of obtaining information and different policies that they follow, within the constriction of the US constitution. The intelligence cycle states the many different steps taken to obtain intelligence from domestic to foreign information.