Why Intelligence Fails : Lessons Learned From The Iranian Revolution And The Iraq Wars

The analysis is then given to consumers and policy makers, once it is checked by the analyst supervisor and peers. The analyst should also be ready to give a briefing on short notice. But both the analyst and the policy maker or consumer have to be aware of at all times, is that the intelligence field does not know everything. “On any given subject, the intelligence community faces what is in effect a field of rocks, and it lacks the resources to turn over every one to see what threats to national security may lurk underneath” (Pillar).

At the end of the 1990-91 Gulf War, the Security Council passed Resolution 687, which set out the terms that Iraq’s leader Suddam Hussein was to comply with. The resolution required the destruction of all chemical and biological weapons, and ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometres and required Iraq to submit to a rigorous UN inspection system. Inspections were conducted by United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and later the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) throughout the 1990s to the US-led invasion 2003. The UNSC has proved to be an effective legal response to monitoring conflict and maintaining world order as no ‘weapons of mass destruction’ were found after the American invasion in 2003.

With this process, is where one can start to see the issue and conflict of interest. Human error is an issue that has always been a factor in the intelligence field and will continue to be a problem until there are no longer humans doing the jobs of the CIA and NCS. An example of human error are described in Richard Betts’, “Surprise Despite Warning: Why Sudden Attacks Succeed”. He goes on to say “doubts of certainty between leaders of intelligence and policymakers which can cause demands for more research and cancellation of declared

Due to this invasion, Iraq was ordered to destroy all weapons and factories that held and created non-conventional weapons. For many years, Iraq did not cooperate with UN sanctions. Iraq did not destroy its weapons either. On contrary, it used the UN's oil for food program to acquire even more weapons. Following September 11, 2001, the United States began to make it

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

Congress plays a vital role in strategic intelligence through the use of operational oversight and budget control, but this has become an issue of concern in recent years. Congressional intelligence committees uphold high decisions pertaining to every type of intelligence collection that exist, and was founded on the concept of no one person having absolute power. This is the concept that undergirds the importance of the oversight of national intelligence. Since the U.S. involvement in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Congress has not had a very robust congressional oversight on intelligence and left the decisions to that of the president and the intelligence agency governing important operational matters.

The United States has used weapons and mass destruction (WMD) to combat the war on terror. WMD’s are weapons that can either be chemical or mechanical that’s used to kill a large population. In one article by Scott J. Glick, a Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, says “a violent extremist group may wish to use a WMD, including: (a) the psychological impact that such a weapon would have on the American public; (b) the economic, political, and social instability that would reasonably be expected to follow the use of a WMD; (c) the physical destruction that could be caused to critical infrastructure, loss of life, and contamination to vital areas;...”(Glick 27). In another article the author John D. Negroponte is the Senior Research Fellow in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in International Affairs at Yale. The other author, Edward M. Wittenstein, is the assistant to the President of Yale and used to work as the executive assistant to the director of National Intelligence (2006-2008). The article goes into saying “and the decision to invade Iraq without adequately questioning the widespread assumption that it possessed WMD…” (Negroponte Wittenstein 6-9). The use of WMDs in any country causes international intelligence to examine those countries. They do this to see where they are, if a country is going to launch, and who is responsible for this. Intelligence doesn’t have an accurate data to say that there definitely is a WMD in an area. This has happened in the past with the Soviet Union and today with North Korea. International Intelligence has spread into different branches and has given those branches certain jobs to watch for both terrorist attacks and

The Gulf War in 1990 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 both had a profound impact not just on the countries directly involved - primarily Iraq and the United States (US) - but also on the geo-politics of the world. Arguably, the War ended in a stalemate because the Iraqi regime that had started the War by invading Kuwait remained in power. Perhaps inevitably then, in March 2003 the US and its allies invaded Iraq with the stated aim of overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein and destroying that regime's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Some similarities between both Wars are immediately obvious: for example, the same country, the

There were many reasons for why the United States eventually entered into a coalition that would invade Iraq. One of the reasons to invade Iraq was to punish Iraq for having weapons of mass destruction or WMD (Cramer). During a United Nations Security Council, Colin Powell who was the United States Secretary of State, made a speech about Iraq’s supposed possession of WMDs. During his speech Powell made many accusations that Iraq possessed WMDs, but his information was not credible (Schwarz). He included an excerpt of an intercepted conversation between Iraqi officials, but he had changed the translation between Arabic to English.

Other rationale for the invasion is still a majorly controversial issue. The United States’ official statement was to remove “a regime that developed and used weapons of mass destruction that harbored and supported terrorists, committed outrageous human rights abuses, and defied the just demands of the United Nations and the world” (Carlyle 2004). Both the United States and the United Kingdom stressed to their civilians that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass

For instance, most common domestic terrorists targeted National Security are gangs and other forms of terrorists inside the US. Intelligence is a solid component of past data that stays permanent. Current intelligence is the non-stop information gathering process to complete the puzzle. Collecting and analyzing the material is what is occurring at this time. Information can be changeable and is also a brainstorming of information. Intelligence estimates is the future information that can be presented as brainpower on a major problem solving technique in our country. Intelligence analysts design endless drills on a how to manual that states explanations on circumstances such as terrorist attacks, nuclear accident, biological war, etc. let’s not forget that all these intelligence techniques are designed to protect and maintain the integrity of our president, our country, its allies and

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

The United States Intelligence community draws on advanced technology and analytical techniques. An intelligence process that sets objectives, collects, analyzes, and report findings, with feedback loops integrated throughout. Explicitly, the intelligence community advantages technology and tradecraft within a proscribed process. However, estimation of threats and decision-making are outcomes of human thinking. Analysts and policymakers create mental models, or short cuts to manage complex, changing environments. In other words, to make sense of ambiguous or uncertain situations, humans form cognitive biases. Informed because of personal experience, education, and specifically applied to intelligence analysis, Davis

Britain and America claim to have gone to war with Iraq as they believed they held weapons of mass destruction and also because they wanted to rid the country of it’s “evil dictator” (who was in power for over twenty years before these two leaders decided to do anything about it). However, during Iraq’s war with Iran during 1980-1988, we gave this “evil dictator” weapons to use and when Iraq used chemical weapons in 1988 against their own people, no one opposed it. Britain and America also claimed that Iraq had broken several resolutions set by the UN (as have many other countries all over the world). However, by invading Iraq, Britain and America defied the UN and International Law themselves, as they went to war without the backing of the UN.

The challenge to an intelligence analyst, as mentioned by Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff, is the lack of experimental, independent testing within a controlled environment. That does not necessarily mean that the intelligence analysis process lacks a formal process or is absent scientific methodologies. Based on Knight (2010), intelligence research identifies patterns through observation so that an analyst can develop a hypothesis to predict future events the very premise of the scientific method. However, the IC has acknowledged a scientific gap and has been migrating towards a more ?coherent scientific discipline? based on the need to improve performance of intelligence analysis (Johnston, ). Furthermore, intelligence analysts are provided with scientific methodologies at their disposal that they can use to strengthen their estimates. In the analyst?s toolkit there are a variety of techniques that can be used to strengthen processes and conform to more valid scientific methods. Heuer (1999), the author of Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH), use ACH as an eight-step procedure using basic insights from cognitive psychology, decision analysis, and the scientific method. According to Bruce, ACH attempts to eliminate cognitive bias and provide other explanations with possible outcomes through testing hypotheses in an attempt to refute or ?disconfirm? them (Bruce, 2008, p. 175). After all, the challenge to inductive inference is not in supporting a study?s conclusions, but refuting them through scientific means. Heuer?s ACH methodology attempts to reconcile this weakness and has become a recognized advancement towards this goal. In Bruce?s essay (2008), he acknowledges that had the 2002 Iraq NIE utilized this methodology, the estimate?s weighty findings should have exposed the