The State of the Nation’s Intelligence Gathring

Re “CIA Iraq ‘Failures’ Condemned,” July 10: The Republican-led Senate concludes that the CIA is to blame for the erroneous assertion of Saddam Hussein’s imminent threat to us because of weapons of mass destruction. Hence the war must have been a mistake. No, says President Bush, Hussein was bad and we’re better off without him. Hussein, of course, was bad before and during the 2000 campaign and bad when Bush commenced his reign. Why didn’t we hear about the need to depose Hussein until after 9/11?

Anyway, what’s critically important, Bush says, is that we create a democracy in Iraq that will lead the way to a freer, better Middle East and, hence, less terrorism. The first significant act of our handpicked government in Iraq is to pull back on a variety of freedoms as martial law is imposed. Will Bush ever be held to account for this debacle?

Art Holland

Los Angeles

If the Iraq war were only about weapons of mass destruction and/or freeing the Iraqis from Hussein, the war would have been imprudent. Iraq’s WMD could be contained by keeping the United Nations inspectors in Iraq indefinitely. Saving Iraqis from Hussein is not a worthy sacrifice, as demonstrated by the horrific insurgency. The merit for the Iraq war is to create a stable representative government in the heart of the Middle East. The Middle East culture must be transformed; otherwise, the Middle East will remain a breeding ground for terror.

Iraq and Afghanistan can be this harbinger for hope. If the current strategy to combat terror is flawed, then it would be more constructive to have our political parties and the media discuss a better strategy to combat this terror. The current dialogue is not constructive, is divisive and distracts from the war on terror.

Bob Paul

Chino

Re “Bush Expected to Oppose Creating Intelligence Czar,” July 11: Clearly, something must be done to upgrade our entire national intelligence system. It operates in a disjointed, fractional manner even to this day. The system operates just fine when it can hide its failures from public view.

However, 9/11 changed all that.

As for an “intelligence czar,” this sounds fine in theory, but our government’s history doesn’t offer much hope that it would improve anything. Do you remember “drug czar”? That position was established 16 years ago to tie government drug-fighting resources together into a unified whole. It never worked. We’re still overrun with drugs, and our drug-fighting resources remain just as disjointed and fractional as they were two decades earlier. So what assurances do we have that an intelligence czar would do any better?

Gary Thornton

Montebello

Yes, the decision to invade Iraq was based on “flawed intelligence” -- that of George W. Bush. But let’s give credit where credit is due. He’s a genius at passing the buck.

Christine Sanchez

Los Angeles