{"id":14347,"date":"2013-09-03T22:33:51","date_gmt":"2013-09-04T02:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=14347"},"modified":"2013-09-03T22:39:16","modified_gmt":"2013-09-04T02:39:16","slug":"how-intelligence-was-twisted-to-support-an-attack-on-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2013\/09\/03\/how-intelligence-was-twisted-to-support-an-attack-on-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"How Intelligence Was Twisted to Support an Attack on Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Truthout<\/em> has the report How Intelligence Was Twisted to Support an Attack on Syria<\/strong><\/a> by Gareth Porter.<\/p>\n

That pattern was particularly clear in the case of the intelligence gathered by covert means. The summary claims, “We intercepted communications involving a senior official intimately familiar with the offensive who confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime on August 21 and was concerned with the U.N. inspectors obtaining evidence.”<\/p>\n

That seems to indicate that U.S. intelligence intercepted such communications. But former British Ambassador Craig Murray has pointed out on his blog<\/a><\/strong> August 31 that the Mount Troodos listening post in Cyprus is used by British and U.S. intelligence to monitor \u201call radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East \u2026 \u201d and that \u201calmost all landline telephone communications in this region is routed through microwave links at some stage [and] picked up on Troodos.\u201d<\/p>\n

All intelligence picked by the Troodos listening post is shared between the U.S. and British intelligence, Murray wrote, but no commmunictions such as the ones described in the U.S. intelligence summary were shared with the British Joint Intelligence Organisation.\u00a0 Murray said a personal contact in U.S. intelligence had told him the reason was that the purported intercept came from the Israelis. The Israeli origin of the intelligence was reported in the U.S. press<\/a><\/strong> as well, because an Israeli source apparently leaked it to a German magazine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There has to be a certain amount of paranoia to believe this report, but it also seems that a bit of paranoia is driving the U.S. intelligence agencies interpretation of what they see.<\/p>\n

The intelligence community is rightly used to assessing the worst-case scenario for the evidence they find.\u00a0 (I presume that to give their bosses a range of options, they also think of the best-case scenario, which analysis we are not seeing.)<\/p>\n

However true risk analysis does not only consider worst-case scenarios of what could happen.\u00a0 Risk analysis must also consider fail-safe responses to the worst-case scenario.\u00a0 In other words, you need to consider the safest way possible to respond to the worst-case event, especially if there is a possibility of misinterpreting the incoming information about what is going on.\u00a0 The true worst-case scenario might be misinterpreting the data, the situation occurring is not actually the situation you think it is, and responding in such a way that more damage is caused than if you had\u00a0 done nothing.<\/p>\n

This is the trouble with the worst-case assumption that Assad carried out the nerve gas attack.\u00a0 Perhaps, the truly worst-case situation is that the rebels perpetrated the attack to draw us in, and in response to our first weak retaliations, they will carry out bigger attacks in order to draw a bigger retaliation.<\/p>\n

In testimony today, John Kerry used the fact that Assad is acting irrationally in carrying out the initial attack, if he is equally irrational in responding to us, he may carry out a bigger attack.\u00a0 Kerry and General Dempsey indicated that they had already chosen further targets in case such an eventuality happened.<\/p>\n

One could equally assume that Assad is rational and did not carry out the first attack.\u00a0 You could assume the rebels were being rational by faking an attack or carrying out a real one to draw us in.\u00a0 If we announce that will will attack other targets if another gas attack is carried out, we are telling the rebels that there first attack was a partial success and another attack would draw more responses from us.\u00a0 So we have given the rebels a road map in how to manipulate us.<\/p>\n

I think Kerry testified that it would be irrational to assume the rebels carried out the gas attack.\u00a0 I don’t think he gave any reason why that would be irrational.\u00a0 Seemed pretty rational to me, though.\u00a0 Especially since the symptoms displayed in the videos did not seem consistent with a real nerve gas attack.\u00a0 It could have been staged, just like the moon landing was staged.\u00a0 (I threw in that last phrase just to see if\u00a0 you were paying attention.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Truthout has the report How Intelligence Was Twisted to Support an Attack on Syria by Gareth Porter. That pattern was particularly clear in the case of the intelligence gathered by covert means. The summary claims, “We intercepted communications involving a senior official intimately familiar with the offensive who confirmed that chemical weapons were used by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14347"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14352,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14347\/revisions\/14352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}