Intel failure: The blame game

Today's newspapers, and last night's broadcast of Nightline, fixed the blame for poor pre-war Iraq intelligence squarely on the CIA. Certain commentators tell us that former DCI George Tenet should have reported the unwanted truth, not the welcome lie -- even if doing so would have resulted in job loss. The Los Angeles Times feels that the fault rests not with any individual actor but with a case of "groupthink." Hard-core neocons blame the massaged data on the intelligence community as a whole, or at least on the analysis division of the CIA.

Only Newsday discusses the minority report which details how the Bushites placed the CIA analysts in a pressure cooker.

This is not a new issue. During the run-up to the Iraq war, a number of articles decried the pressures put on the intelligence community to deliver product shaped by the customer's request. Even Doonesbury devoted a few strips to this motif. We do not need a Senate investigation to tell us that sky is blue and grass is green and Bush likes his facts fudged.

Now the neocons who created this mess are taking a blame-the-spooks stance. I wonder what would happen if all of society adopted a similar tactic?

Consider the possibilities. You can blame Ben and Jerry for selling you the ice cream that made you fat. The fact that you asked for their product hardly mitigates their responsibility.

But don't stop there. The neocon strategy tells us who is responsible for Mad Cow Syndrome.

Many experts say that prion-borne livestock diseases are spread by feeding animal product to herbivores. Who, then, should be held accountable? The captains of the ranching industry? The FDA officials who allowed this practice? The guys who own the large feed companies?

Nope. Let's fix blame squarely on the poor $8-an-hour shmoe at the rendering plant who physically tosses "downer" cow carcasses, euthanized pets, and expired zoo animals into the slurry. Let's call him before a congressional committee and interrogate him: "Didn't you know the slop you were cooking up was being fed to livestock?"

"Yes, but..." he might start to answer.

"And didn't you notice that sick animals became part of the feed?"

"Look, if I didn't do as I was told, I would have lost my job!"

"Not an excuse! It's all your fault! You poisoned our beef supply! J'ACCUSE!"

Similarly, we can point the accusing finger at the person who poisoned our intel -- not at he who demanded the dash of arsenic, but at he who reluctantly supplied it. Thanks to the neocons, we always know who to blame: Anyone but the neocons.