Feith's response to the Inspector General's report

Some background on Doug Feith

As shown in the previous post, there is now an official report showing how the Bush administration in general and the Pentagon in particular manipulated the pre-war intelligence regarding possible connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

The man in charge of the intelligence chop shop otherwise known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was Doug Feith. As noted in a January 27, 2005, L.A. Times article,

Retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks, U.S. commander during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, reserved particular venom for Feith in his recent autobiography, "American Soldier."

"No one could deny Feith's academic achievements," Franks wrote. "But Feith was a theorist whose ideas were often impractical."

Elsewhere in the book, Franks wrote that Feith was "getting a reputation around here as the dumbest [expletive] guy on the planet."

This view was echoed by Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department. In October of 2005, I published a post about a speech Wilkerson delivered at the New American Foundation. In that speech, he described Feith.

...Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, whom most of you probably know Tommy Franks said was the stupidest blankety, blank man in the world. He was. (Laughter.) Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man. (Laughter.) And yet – and yet – and yet, after the secretary of State agrees to a $40 billion department rather than a $30 billion department having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw itself in a closet somewhere.

Granted, given the conflicts between the State Department and the Pentagon over Iraq, Wilkerson's opinion could (and some would say "should") be taken with a grain of salt. However, I do not see that Franks had any ax to grind with Feith.

In any event, both men basically called Feith stupid. Feith's reactions to the DoD IG's report provide support for that conclusion. Then again, Feith's reactions also show that he likely suffers from memory loss, delusion, and a problem with telling the truth.

Feith's reactions

• Overview
  

Dougie's reactions were actually rather predictable. Any question about anything the Inspector General or anybody else said was answered with some variation of "That is not true," or "That is incorrect." Most of the time, those statements ring about as true as denying that grass is generally green. And then there was the outright lie, but I'm saving that for last.

I am going to quote primarily from Feith's February 11, 2007, interview on "Fox News Sunday." For further reference, check out Feith's February 9, 2007, interview on NPR's "Day to Day."

• Feith's basic story: "We were just criticising and questioning."

Every time Feith was confronted with the findings of the Inspector General that OSP was performing intelligence activities and turning out intelligence products, Feith flatly disagreed and said that OSP was only reviewing, criticizing, and questioning the work of other agencies, particularly the CIA.

He claimed repeatedly that OSP's "review" was needed because the CIA was doing flawed and sloppy work, and yet the only explanation of such such bad work was always a variation of what he told Fox's Chris Wallace at the start of that interview:

WALLACE: The Pentagon inspector general issued a report Friday that was highly critical of your actions back in 2002. It says your office disseminated what it called, quote, "alternative intelligence assessments about links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda that made the case for going to war."

Let's take a look if we can, here. While such actions — this is from the inspector general's report. "While such actions were not illegal or unauthorized, the actions were, in our opinion, inappropriate given that the products did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community and were, in some cases, shown as intelligence products."

Mr. Feith, were you giving the president, the vice president and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld the ammunition they wanted to go to war?

FEITH: What the people in the Pentagon were doing who were criticized by the inspector general was providing a critical look at the CIA's work on the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection.

And there was a sense on their part that the CIA was filtering its own intelligence to suit its own theory that the Baathists would not cooperate because they were secularists with the religious extremists of Al Qaeda, that they were not doing proper intelligence work, and our people were criticizing them, not putting forward an alternative intelligence analysis.

(emphasis added). See? It was the CIA that had its own agenda (to prove that Baathists would not work with Al Qaeda), and it was the CIA that was ignoring intelligence that did not meet that agenda. The OSP certainly did not have any agenda to promote. And the OSP did not present alternative intelligence assessments. No, those were questions and critiques, not alternative assessments.

• Feith was and is full of shit.
  

Sorry, folks, that is the most concise and accurate way to state the matter.

Actually, I'm going to take a shot at being the first to coin a new phrase inspired by the Bush administration. I was way late with "Burning Bush doctrine" and "vote and run," but maybe I can claim to be the first to use "full of Feith" to mean a certain degree of being full of shit. As one can see from any recent interview with Feith, he is completely full of himself, and his statements are full of shit. And that was the inspiration for "full of Feith." I will try to provide a more specific definition in the near future, but it will have something to do with uttering bullshit that is so obviously wrong that the speaker is completely stupid, delusional, or an outright liar--or all of the above. For an example, do read on...

Review the previous post, and then read Feith's interviews. You will see that, with one exception, Feith did not dispute the facts cited by the IG which formed the basis of his findings. Instead, Feith disputed the application of the term "intelligence" to anything OSP did (insert joke here).

But let's go back to the actual question asked by Wallace in the above excerpt, which was "Mr. Feith, were you giving the president, the vice president and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld the ammunition they wanted to go to war?" Notice that Feith did not directly answer the question; however, I think it is fair to imply that Feith's answer was "no." Wallace got back to this basic topic a bit later with this question:

WALLACE: Okay. Let's talk about it, because the briefing was titled "Iraq and Al Qaeda Making the Case," and here are some of the highlights from your PowerPoint presentation. "Intelligence indicates cooperation in all categories, mature symbiotic relationship." "Some indications of possible Iraq coordination with Al Qaeda specifically related to 9/11."

And you said an alleged meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague in April 2001 was a known contact.

Mr. Feith, all of that — all of that was wrong, wasn't it?

And then Feith actually answered "No, not at all." Folks, that claim is certifiably full of Feith. Every single one of those matters was proven wrong, and there was plenty of evidence of that before the war (and at some point that will be detailed over at Iraq: the missing link in the war on terror?). The 9-11 Commission said Feith was wrong on all these matters, and so did the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Pentagon's Inspector General is just the latest to say so. And Doug Feith still says he was right. Oh, but wait...there's more. Here is the rest of Feith's answer:

There was substantial intelligence. I mean, evidence is a legal term not really appropriate here. There was a lot of information out there. Intelligence is very sketchy, and it's always open to interpretation.

On this issue, there were people who disagreed about the intelligence and the people in the Pentagon were giving a critical review. They were not presenting alternative conclusions. They were presenting a challenge to the way the CIA was looking at things and filtering its own information.

Intelligence certainly is open to interpretation, and the truth is that the Bush administration did not like the CIA's interpretation because it did not support the decision to go to war, so Feith and his OSP came up with their own interpretation which disregarded the intelligence which contradicted OSP's interpretation, intentionally failed to disclose the CIA's analysis, and told government officials to disregard the CIA's analysis. That, ladies and gentlemen, was presenting alternative conclusions. Wallace certainly took that position as the interview continued:

WALLACE: I have to tell you, I mean, when I — I mean, I read these as "mature symbiotic relationship", "known contact" — that sure sounds like conclusions.

FEITH: You're plucking language out of a briefing, the thrust of which was why is the CIA not accounting for information that it had that suggested an Iraq-Al Qaeda relationship when the CIA was excluding that information from its own finished intelligence at the time.

It was a criticism. It's healthy to criticize the CIA's intelligence. What the people in the Pentagon were doing was right. It was good government.

Gee, I wonder if plucking language out of a briefing is anything like plucking only the information you like out of a lot of intelligence that you don't like? What Feith and the rest of the his ilk at the Pentagon did played a significant role in deceiving the public and other government officials and in getting us into a war that has been a complete cluster f#*k that has harmed this country in many ways. That is not good government. Good government would be getting stupid assholes like Feith out of office and holding them accountable.

Moreover, Feith conveniently left out the part where the OSP presented its "challenge" without telling the CIA about it beforehand or giving the CIA a chance to respond.

And now we come to the really good part, which is the topic about which Feith outright lied. In the midst of all his other bullshit, he said the following:

Nobody in my office ever said there was an operational relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It's just not correct. I mean, words matter. And people are throwing around loose allegations, vague allegations, based on not reading the words carefully.

*******

There's an enormous amount of misinformation about this subject. Your quote from the 9/11 commission report is significant. That did not contradict my office. Nobody in my office ever claimed there was an operational relationship.

Feith's claims that "Nobody in my office ever claimed there was an operational relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda are 100% FALSE. First of all, what is the difference between a "mature symbiotic relationship" and an "operational relationship"? Second, Feith authored a memo that was sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee in October 2003 that said that

Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by The Weekly Standard.

I guess maybe Feith considers himself not to be from his own office. Or maybe he is just an inveterate liar. Or maybe he simply is stupid. He is definitely full of Feith.