New York Sun
Circular Reasoning
By Laurie Mylroie
April 13, 2005
The recently released Robb-Silverman Report on weapons of mass destruction contains excellent suggestions on how American intelligence capabilities might be improved. However, the section dealing with Iraq is gravely flawed. It is artificially constrained. The Commission itself states: "[W]e were not asked to determine whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction" (emphasis in original). That project, as the Commission explains, was already done by the Iraq Survey Group. "[O]ur mission," the Commission affirms, "is to investigate the reasons why the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments were so different from what the Iraq Survey Group [ISG] found after the war."
There are three possible answers: the prewar assessments were wrong; the ISG report is wrong; or some combination of the two. Yet the Commission's mandate did not allow it to question the ISG's findings, or so the report suggests. Thus, one possible explanation was eliminated by administrative fiat.
The ISG concluded that Iraq destroyed its proscribed weapons in 1991, and the Commission's apparent mandate requiring it to accept that conclusion is a fundamental lapse. It contravenes the Commission's own emphasis on the need for competitive analysis and the necessity for analysts vigorously to explore alternative explanations.
An alternative explanation exists as to why weapons caches were not found in Iraq: some were destroyed and some were moved to Syria, as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld suggested in the months following the fall of Saddam's regime. Indeed, the director of the Pentagon office that analyzes satellite imagery explained that before the war began and during its early days, there was an "uptick" in truck traffic from Iraq to Syria. Israeli intelligence believes significant material was sent to Syria. And the ISG itself felt that it could not conclusively exclude this possibility.
Yet the Commission did just that in a little-noticed footnote. Footnote 724 to the chapter on Iraq states, "Given the overall findings of the ISG, there was nothing left to move by March 2003, save possibly, some pre-1991 CW [chemical weapons] shells. Therefore, the conclusion that militarily significant stockpiles of CW or BW [biological weapons] could not have been moved to Syria just before the war necessarily follows from the ISG's overall findings about the state of Iraq's WMD after 1991."
This is a logical fallacy: circulus in probando or circular reasoning. One cannot legitimately use the conclusion of an argument as one of its premises.
The Commission's widely touted statement, "We conclude that the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," is itself circulus in probando, premised as it is on the unquestioned acceptance of the ISG's published conclusion that Iraq destroyed its WMD stockpiles years ago.
Indeed, one important finding was stricken from the ISG report, because the State Department objected to it. The ISG learned that in the mid-1990s, Syria began co-operating with Iraq on its WMD programs. That finding makes even more plausible the notion that Iraq moved material to Syria just before the war began, as it would have been a natural outgrowth of the established co-operation between the two Baathist states.
If the Commission had considered the work of the ISG, it would have found many problems, including those that led to its creation, and which cast doubt on its conclusions. Initially, American officials expected that large caches of proscribed weapons would be found in Iraq. The job of finding them fell to ill trained soldiers, who did not know Arabic, but nonetheless often operated without translators, and who did not use the expertise available to them. Senior people in the relevant WMD areas were available by video conference at all times to advise on suspicious objects that the troops might find, but this expertise was not utilized. Soldiers would go to a site, find something suspicious, return 48 hours later, and it would be gone. Moreover, systematic, organized looting of many suspected weapons sites occurred then.
When the ISG was dispatched to Iraq in June 2003, it was still assumed that significant weapons caches would be found. The most knowledgeable individuals were members of UNSCOM (the U.N. Special Commission), who had been responsible for Iraq's weapons programs from 1991 until 1999.The U.S. intelligence community, however, wanted the glory of finding the weapons themselves and largely excluded UNSCOM members. Moreover, those going to Iraq received hardship pay. It was not uncommon for managers to send themselves, rather than more expert staff. The ISG, as initially composed, contained five to 10 genuine experts, in the view of one well-informed American official (that changed after Charles Duelfer, deputy chairman of UNSCOM, took over in early 2004, but the framework for the investigation was already set).
The Iraqi scientists were not interrogated well. That job initially fell to military police and the FBI, who worked on the basis of written questions prepared by analysts. There was no immediate follow-up to press any scientist who lied, because the interrogators were not knowledgeable enough to recognize lies or implausible answers.
The scientists had little incentive to cooperate. American government lawyers ruled that the new Iraqi government, when it was formed, had the right to prosecute the scientists for any crimes they may have committed. So American officials could not offer the scientists a comfortable retirement abroad in exchange for their co-operation. Moreover, a number of scientists who did provide information were killed afterwards by unknown assailants.
The scientists told the ISG that Iraq's proscribed weapons were destroyed in 1991, as they had told UNSCOM. UNSCOM did not believe them, but the ISG did. One such story has come to light. Dr. Rihab Taha, a major figure in Iraq's BW program, told the ISG that the anthrax produced under her supervision was chemically deactivated and dumped near one of Saddam's palaces, but she could never bring herself to tell that to UNSCOM, lest it provoke Saddam's wrath. Taha's story was uncorroborated and contradicted other information, but nonetheless the ISG accepted it.
Finally, the ISG did report on a significant, previously unknown aspect of Iraq's BW program. The Iraqi Intelligence Service maintained a number of clandestine laboratories. The CIA insisted on calling the labs small-scale and claimed they were intended only for assassinations. The ISG, however, learned that among other things, the Iraqi Intelligence Service was working on aerosolizing the poison ricin, so it could be distributed from perfume sprayers. That sounds more like terrorism than murder.
UNSCOM was long the primary source of information regarding Iraq's weapons programs. To understand why the pre-war view regarding those weapons is so different from what emerged after the war, the work of the ISG should properly be compared with that of UNSCOM. If that were done, probably the conclusion would be that UNSCOM saw through a number of key Iraqi deceptions that the ISG failed to catch, and Americans would gain a much better understanding of why we went to war in Iraq.
Ms. Mylroie is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "Bush vs. the Beltway: The Inside Battle over War in Iraq" (HarperCollins).
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/12154
Circular Reasoning
By Laurie Mylroie
April 13, 2005
The recently released Robb-Silverman Report on weapons of mass destruction contains excellent suggestions on how American intelligence capabilities might be improved. However, the section dealing with Iraq is gravely flawed. It is artificially constrained. The Commission itself states: "[W]e were not asked to determine whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction" (emphasis in original). That project, as the Commission explains, was already done by the Iraq Survey Group. "[O]ur mission," the Commission affirms, "is to investigate the reasons why the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments were so different from what the Iraq Survey Group [ISG] found after the war."
There are three possible answers: the prewar assessments were wrong; the ISG report is wrong; or some combination of the two. Yet the Commission's mandate did not allow it to question the ISG's findings, or so the report suggests. Thus, one possible explanation was eliminated by administrative fiat.
The ISG concluded that Iraq destroyed its proscribed weapons in 1991, and the Commission's apparent mandate requiring it to accept that conclusion is a fundamental lapse. It contravenes the Commission's own emphasis on the need for competitive analysis and the necessity for analysts vigorously to explore alternative explanations.
An alternative explanation exists as to why weapons caches were not found in Iraq: some were destroyed and some were moved to Syria, as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld suggested in the months following the fall of Saddam's regime. Indeed, the director of the Pentagon office that analyzes satellite imagery explained that before the war began and during its early days, there was an "uptick" in truck traffic from Iraq to Syria. Israeli intelligence believes significant material was sent to Syria. And the ISG itself felt that it could not conclusively exclude this possibility.
Yet the Commission did just that in a little-noticed footnote. Footnote 724 to the chapter on Iraq states, "Given the overall findings of the ISG, there was nothing left to move by March 2003, save possibly, some pre-1991 CW [chemical weapons] shells. Therefore, the conclusion that militarily significant stockpiles of CW or BW [biological weapons] could not have been moved to Syria just before the war necessarily follows from the ISG's overall findings about the state of Iraq's WMD after 1991."
This is a logical fallacy: circulus in probando or circular reasoning. One cannot legitimately use the conclusion of an argument as one of its premises.
The Commission's widely touted statement, "We conclude that the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," is itself circulus in probando, premised as it is on the unquestioned acceptance of the ISG's published conclusion that Iraq destroyed its WMD stockpiles years ago.
Indeed, one important finding was stricken from the ISG report, because the State Department objected to it. The ISG learned that in the mid-1990s, Syria began co-operating with Iraq on its WMD programs. That finding makes even more plausible the notion that Iraq moved material to Syria just before the war began, as it would have been a natural outgrowth of the established co-operation between the two Baathist states.
If the Commission had considered the work of the ISG, it would have found many problems, including those that led to its creation, and which cast doubt on its conclusions. Initially, American officials expected that large caches of proscribed weapons would be found in Iraq. The job of finding them fell to ill trained soldiers, who did not know Arabic, but nonetheless often operated without translators, and who did not use the expertise available to them. Senior people in the relevant WMD areas were available by video conference at all times to advise on suspicious objects that the troops might find, but this expertise was not utilized. Soldiers would go to a site, find something suspicious, return 48 hours later, and it would be gone. Moreover, systematic, organized looting of many suspected weapons sites occurred then.
When the ISG was dispatched to Iraq in June 2003, it was still assumed that significant weapons caches would be found. The most knowledgeable individuals were members of UNSCOM (the U.N. Special Commission), who had been responsible for Iraq's weapons programs from 1991 until 1999.The U.S. intelligence community, however, wanted the glory of finding the weapons themselves and largely excluded UNSCOM members. Moreover, those going to Iraq received hardship pay. It was not uncommon for managers to send themselves, rather than more expert staff. The ISG, as initially composed, contained five to 10 genuine experts, in the view of one well-informed American official (that changed after Charles Duelfer, deputy chairman of UNSCOM, took over in early 2004, but the framework for the investigation was already set).
The Iraqi scientists were not interrogated well. That job initially fell to military police and the FBI, who worked on the basis of written questions prepared by analysts. There was no immediate follow-up to press any scientist who lied, because the interrogators were not knowledgeable enough to recognize lies or implausible answers.
The scientists had little incentive to cooperate. American government lawyers ruled that the new Iraqi government, when it was formed, had the right to prosecute the scientists for any crimes they may have committed. So American officials could not offer the scientists a comfortable retirement abroad in exchange for their co-operation. Moreover, a number of scientists who did provide information were killed afterwards by unknown assailants.
The scientists told the ISG that Iraq's proscribed weapons were destroyed in 1991, as they had told UNSCOM. UNSCOM did not believe them, but the ISG did. One such story has come to light. Dr. Rihab Taha, a major figure in Iraq's BW program, told the ISG that the anthrax produced under her supervision was chemically deactivated and dumped near one of Saddam's palaces, but she could never bring herself to tell that to UNSCOM, lest it provoke Saddam's wrath. Taha's story was uncorroborated and contradicted other information, but nonetheless the ISG accepted it.
Finally, the ISG did report on a significant, previously unknown aspect of Iraq's BW program. The Iraqi Intelligence Service maintained a number of clandestine laboratories. The CIA insisted on calling the labs small-scale and claimed they were intended only for assassinations. The ISG, however, learned that among other things, the Iraqi Intelligence Service was working on aerosolizing the poison ricin, so it could be distributed from perfume sprayers. That sounds more like terrorism than murder.
UNSCOM was long the primary source of information regarding Iraq's weapons programs. To understand why the pre-war view regarding those weapons is so different from what emerged after the war, the work of the ISG should properly be compared with that of UNSCOM. If that were done, probably the conclusion would be that UNSCOM saw through a number of key Iraqi deceptions that the ISG failed to catch, and Americans would gain a much better understanding of why we went to war in Iraq.
Ms. Mylroie is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "Bush vs. the Beltway: The Inside Battle over War in Iraq" (HarperCollins).
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/12154
