Wie geht es weiter mit den US-Geheimdiensten unter Bush?

--- Die etwas umständlich betitelte Comission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction hat ihren Abschlussbericht zur Aufklärung der US-Geheimdienste vor dem Irak-Krieg vorgelegt. Bush sieht das Ergebnis -- eine vernichtende Kritik -- natürlich positiv im Sinne eines neuen Ansporns: The work of our intelligence community is extremely difficult work. Every day, dangerous regimes are working to prevent us from uncovering their programs and their possible relationships with terrorists. ... And that's why this report is important. It will enable these fine men and women to do their jobs in better fashion, to be able to more likely accomplish their mission, which is to protect the American people, and that's why I'm grateful to the commission for this hard work. Jetzt werde ja alles besser mit dem umstrittenen Ex-Botschafter Negroponte als Oberspion. Die meisten Medienberichte zu dem Report sind weniger optimistisch und erinnern noch mal an die Fehler der Vergangenheit und die bewussten Falschinterpretationen der Bush-Regierung, so etwa die New York Times: It found no evidence that intelligence had been politically twisted to suit preconceptions about Iraq's unconventional weapons programs, and made no formal judgments about how top policy makers had used that intelligence to justify war. Yet in its own way, the presidential commission on intelligence left little doubt that President Bush and his top aides had gotten what they wanted, not what they needed, when they were told that Saddam Hussein had a threatening arsenal of illicit weapons. "It is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom," the commission said. But that understated indictment is about the extent of the commission's effort to explain the responsibilities of the nation's highest officials for one of the worst intelligence failures of modern times. So the latest and presumably the last official review of such questions leaves unresolved what may be the biggest question of all: Who was accountable, and will they ever be held to account for letting what amounted to mere assumptions "harden into presumptions," as Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of the commission, put it.

Die LA Times blickt noch mehr auf die seitdem vorgenommenen Änderungen: More than three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies remain poorly coordinated, have resisted reform and produce work that is "increasingly irrelevant," a presidential commission concluded Thursday in a scathing new report. Despite vast increases in funding and manpower after 2001, America's 15 intelligence services were "dead wrong" about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and were still "often unable to gather intelligence on the very things we care the most about," the panel warned. "Across the board, the intelligence community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors," the nine-member panel concluded after a yearlong inquiry. "In some cases, it knows less now than it did five or 10 years ago." The withering critique of America's spy services, delivered Thursday to President Bush, provided vivid new details about the intelligence debacle before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, including the role of a now-discredited defector code-named "Curveball." The 601 pages of unclassified material released to the public hinted that similar problems of inadequate collection and shoddy analysis also may undermine U.S. assessments of nuclear programs and regime intentions in Iran and North Korea. But those details were classified and panel members refused to discuss them. Dazu passt auch gleich ein weiteres Ergebnis des Berichts, dass es mit der Aufklärung über das Biowaffen-Potenzial der el Qaida anscheinend gar nicht gut steht. Mehr zum Thema "Aufklärung als Vernebelung" in Telepolis und auch im neu aufgelegten woweezowee