[BoringCode]

You clearly don't understand the intelligence process if this is your critique.

First, the people making the DNC hack report are not the same as the analysts who worked on Iraq. The IC is not a monolith.

Second, the Bush White House saw the intelligence they wanted to see.

Third, burning sources and methods is a very real concern in intelligence gathering. That reality can't be ignored no matter how much you want information to be free and open.

You don't have to trust the IC. In fact you probably shouldn't take what they say at face value. But there are very good reasons for why they operate the way they do.

[grandalf]

> But there are very good reasons for why they operate the way they do.

Indeed there are, and no reasonable person would say that having intelligence agencies is a bad thing.

The issue in this case is that the US intelligence agencies have been leveraged politically to help convince the public to support various policies, when in fact there has not been credible evidence.

A lot of people put their lives on the line to end the cold war, and now we have a faction of US politicians who are trying very hard to galvanize the same historic antagonism. We should be judicious and skeptical, and not let them use the common technique of fake urgency to drive a big decision without adequate forethought.

[BoringCode]

I'm addressing the poor thesis that "the IC has been (deliberately) wrong before, therefore they can't be trusted without an undefined amount of evidence."

The points you raise are good and worth discussing, but unrelated to what I was talking about.