[bgravinz]

Once an entire government worth of people led the US into war that cost millions of lives over fake reports of nukes.

It would be interesting to compare the damage caused by open, crowd-sourced investigative efforts against the damage caused of closed "authoritative" investigative efforts.

[matthewdgreen]

I think it’s amusing that the takeaway from this episode is “the intelligence agencies screwed up” and not “the intelligence agencies found no evidence, and then were directly pressured by their political masters to construct evidence to justify a desired military outcome.”

[ABeeSea]

It wasn’t even a real intelligent agency that drummed up support for war. It was a temporary agency created by Rumsfelds and Cheney with the Orwellian name of “Office of Special Plans.” They deliberately lied and misused raw intelligence signals to force us to war.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans

[scottlocklin]

There's some CIA disinfo right there. Rumsfeld and the neocon claque certainly ginned it up. The spooks though, said it would be a "slam dunk" that there would be WMD in Iraq. Here's Tenet grousing he was quoted:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cia-slamdunk-idUSN264...

[peanutz454]

So season 2 of TV Series 24 aired between October 29, 2002 May 20, 2003. Its main theme was US govt using fabricated evidence to attack middle eastern countries. The Office of Special Plans (OSP) existed from September 2002 to June 2003.

[eirki]

Reminds me of the "House of Special Purpose"

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=House_of_Special_...

[alasdair_]

The intelligence agencies repeatedly highlighted that the information was dubious at best.

The politically appointed heads of the intelligence agencies used this information to lie to the American public.

[artificialLimbs]

If the people at the agency had integrity, they would have immediately brought these concerns up the chain or public.

[skissane]

Who is to say they didn't bring them up the chain, and the chain just ignored them?

Try to bring issues to the public and they'll charge you with "espionage"/"mishandling classified information"/etc. Even if the charges don't succeed, you'll lose your career and the court case will ruin you.

[n0nc3]

Not just a court case though, an investigation or a "psych eval" are enough to ruin someone. Take a look at Russ Tice.

Also, read Ronan Farrow's piece from the New Yorker last week. They targeted a straight-laced DOJ lawyer with >20 years of experience. These organizations are out of control and pose a very serious threat to our freedom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Tice

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/how-a-cia-cove...

[cycomanic]

Thanks for posting this great article in the new yorker!

[harry8]

>Who is to say they didn't bring them up the chain, and the chain just ignored them?

And that is why those senior public servants with power in security agencies hate wikileaks and are willing to trash the constitutional protections for journalists to get Assange and also want to destroy Snowden so very badly.

[lostcolony]

See: Edward Snowden

[zhengyi13]

See Deep Throat, while you're at it.

[mumblemumble]

Here, let me save y'all from the results of a Google search for that one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_(Watergate)

[alasdair_]

They did. And they did again.

And the public had literally millions of people on the streets shouting about it.

And we still went to war anyway.

[mapmap]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair

[techer]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)

[skissane]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93East_Timor_s...

Australia and East Timor negotiated a treaty to divide up oil and gas in the sea between the two countries. Australia bugged the East Timorese government offices to get an unfair advantage in the negotiations.

The East Timorese government found about this, and then sued Australia in the Permanent Court of Arbitration to have the treaty invalidated.

An Australian intelligence agent (''Witness K''), who knew about the bugging, contacted East Timor's lawyer – Australian Bernard Collaery – offering to testify for East Timor.

The Australian government responded by cancelling Witness K's passport to stop him from testifying, raiding the offices of East Timor's lawyer, and now both of them are on trial – in secret.

[BLKNSLVR]

The word on the street that the extremity of the "in secret" part is the Director of Public Prosecutions, Christian Porter, protecting old party mate, Alexander Downer, to keep his name out of the mud for as long as possible, as it's likely he was the top of the chain of authorization for the bugging, being that he was the Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time and was outspoken against East Timor for accusing Australia of spying.

The problem is that in protecting one person's reputation they're ruining the reputation of an entire country.

Shameful Australia.

[stirlo]

I'm sorry but whats wrong with this?

It's exactly the job of the Australian intelligence agencies to protect for the countries interests and gain advantages where they can.

This case is even more reasonable as it's a country spying on a country so both parties have the opportunity do so.

The NSA has directly spied on corporations (Airbus) and passed the information to their own corporations (Boeing) in the past which seems less acceptable to me.

[ckozlowski]

You might like this article then: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/magazine/colin-powell-ira...

[EGreg]

The thing is that we are always told there is evidence, like for sure, trust us:

Assad bombed his own people

The Russians hacked the election (a very broad statement, like “let’s believe in evolution”)

North Korea hacked SONY

All at very convenient times for our moves abroad and totally nonsensical from the point of view of motivation of the ones doing it (like Assad)

It’s like they don’t even try anymore. They just say “17 intelligence agencies all concur” with each other.

[dimitrios1]

Ha, if only they had the guts to be so specific! They just hid behind the blanket statement of "WMD"s and deflected any questions of specifics. Could have been nerve gas, could have been a biological agent. Everyone played their role (media and government) in deflecting attention away from the core issue that we were being bullshitted.

[chordalkeyboard]

> Everyone played their role (media and government) in deflecting attention away from the core issue that we were being bullshitted.

That would never happen today.

[CGamesPlay]

> war that cost millions of lives

Not to show support for the invasion of Iraq, but it was a far cry from "millions of lives". https://www.iraqbodycount.org

[gokceozantoptas]

I think the only cost is not the body count. One must look to the displaced populations, affects of the drop of GDP, etc. And how one thing led to another and in the end gave rise to (or at least provided the dirt to grow for) IS, etc.

[joe_the_user]

It's clearly possible to be against jumping to conclusions with crowd sourced material and also being false claims by the government (especially given that in the case of the Iraq invasion we don't how much fraud or bad faith really went into it).

Which is to say that measuring damage done by the Iraq invasion versus damage cause people falsely finger individuals for crimes is an exercise in fallacious analogy. The US isn't planning to crowd source their next invasion research question.

[kristopolous]

I bet a comparative study can be done. Some places have a history of vigilantes and lynch mobs and a banning of that practice for the authoritative form.

I wouldn't actually be surprised if people actively debated this and did some analytical legwork when they were prevalent as some twisted justification for the practice

[colechristensen]

It wasn’t over fake reports of nukes. The weapons reports were how it was justified for a while, it is quite doubtful that the war calculus relied on this for decision makers in any way more than as a coin to sell the war to the people.

[Razengan]

> It would be interesting to compare the damage caused by open, crowd-sourced investigative efforts against the damage caused of closed "authoritative" investigative efforts.

I hate that word “interesting” when used for things that are downright fucking despicable.

Human history is rife with witch hunts. Perpetrated by communities against people living on the fringe of society or anyone they just didn’t like. Someone to blame for nothing in particular when they can’t find any other outlet for frustration. I guarantee you wouldn’t find it “interesting” if you were the target of oPeN cRoWdSoUrCeD iNvEsTiGaTiVe EfFoRtS.

[emteycz]

And you wouldn't like being the target of a governmental agency either. The question is which is worse and in what ways.

[andy_ppp]

I thought there was some convincing evidence of nuclear centrifuges being buried in the head scientists back garden by his genocidal sons?

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...

I mean I quite like this summation by Christopher Hitchens about the Iraq war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABqrEiuP0I

[wrycoder]

Read “The Bomb in my Garden” by Obeidi. As I recollect, he buried the plans for a centrifuge and some key parts.

[acqq]

If I read this correctly Obeidi hid that parts from Saddam, not for him, from the article above:

“Had the secret cache been discovered by Saddam’s security elements, Obeidi and his family might have been eliminated.”

And those were the leftovers from dismantling the stuff which was used before 1991, as far as I understand: definitely not a smoking gun, more the old rusty non-functional parts which Saddam didn’t know existed.