by Flemming Funch
A key source of the information the U.S. administration based the decision to invade Iraq on seems to have been a secret office in Washington, D.C. It has the curious name "Office of Special Plans" and had a direct line feeding intelligence and conclusions to George W and his friends. The problem was that it wasn't really intelligence they were feeding him, even though it was presented as such. The office was staffed by ideologue neo-conservatives who specialized in putting together exactly the story and the information and reasons that the administration would like to hear. They didn't consult with traditional intelligence professionals like the CIA, and their information and conclusions weren't reviewed or cross-checked by anybody but themselves. They sub-contracted some of the work to various groups who had similar neo-conservative views, such as an Israeli group that manufactured suitable intelligence separately from Mossad.
You can read about it for example here, or a detailed analysis here.
Some of this has come to light from a whistleblower, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the office of Under Secretary of Defence until her retirement in April. "What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline", Kwiatkowski wrote. "If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of 'intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam (Hussein) occupation (in Iraq) has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defence" (OSD)... and she mentions here one of the prevailing themes she noticed in operation in the Office of Special Plans:"Groupthink. Defined as 'reasoning or decision-making by a group, often characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view', groupthink was, and probably remains, the predominant characteristic of Pentagon Middle East policy development. The result of groupthink is the elevation of opinion into a kind of accepted 'fact', and uncritical acceptance of extremely narrow and isolated points of view.
The result of groupthink has been extensively studied in the history of American foreign policy, and it will have a prominent role when the history of the Bush administration is written. Groupthink, in this most recent case leading to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, will be found, I believe, to have caused a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress." A cult of fanatics duping the United States congress with manufactured and incorrect information into going to war. I don't see why this shouldn't be as big as Watergate.
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