> America’s spies had told President George W. Bush that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted a nuclear-weapons program and that Iraq possessed biological weapons and mobile production facilities, as well as stockpiles of chemical weapons.
That's not true at all. The intelligence community reported that there were no weapons of mass destruction but then the White House got involved in the analysis and brought politics into it and changed the reports.
It should also be mentioned that a significant amount of Iraq's chemical weapons were given to Iraq by the US. Iraq destroyed the munitions they hadn't already used in Iran or against the Kurds. Then UNMOVIC was sent to Iraq to inventory and account for all of the destroyed munitions. The head of the UN team repeatedly reported that the inventory of destroyed munitions and verification of compliance with UN mandates was a matter of months. The invasion of Iraq was announced shortly after.
Iran has been on the receiving end of those weapons of mass destruction. They have lost 30 to 50 thousand people to those US bankrolled chemical weapons attacks and its still an openly grieved unhealed wound in Iranian society.
Most cities have graves, cemeteries, memorials were families still grieve and remember their dead.
Notably, Iran never retaliated with chemical weapons. Could have a common root cause that later led to a fatwa against developing nukes.
I am surprised that the lay American gets so surprised that they do not like the American administration so much.
Add to that the fact that US upended their parliamentary democracy with a sponsored coup, that the US shot down one of their domestic passenger jets in flight with no apologies forthcoming.
The Iran-Iraq war is one of the nastier parts of the 20th century post-WW2 era, with huge casualties, and has been somewhat tragically forgotten. Perhaps because it wasn't entirely the fault of the US, although they did arm Saddam Hussein at that point.
As was Iran-Contra. Oliver North should still be in jail, not a talking head on the propaganda channel.
> The Iran-Iraq war is one of the nastier parts of the 20th century post-WW2 era, with huge casualties, and has been somewhat tragically forgotten. Perhaps because it wasn't entirely the fault of the US
Nah, mate. We mainly remember the history that touches us. The Iran-Iraq war is surely not forgotten in their countries, but its impact on the West was limited, so we don't really talk about it.
Especially Cheney pushed hard for this, ignored the intelligence communities assessments, then got his own source, a burned source, Ahmed Chalabi to fabricate reasons for an invasion.
In the UK the main deception was the farcical Iraq Dossier, aka "the dodgy dossier", put together by Blair's propaganda chief Alaister Campbell. Colin Powell had seen it before release but not sure what role it played in the US
It's difficult now to find the "Project for a new American Century" documents that were online in that era, but they described a planned attack on Iran through Iraq. That is, the Iraq war was supposed to be the first step towards the invasion they'd desired since 1979.
Colin Powell's WMD dog and pony show in front of the UN council looked really fishy at the time, as if it was being sabotaged by the people who had to make up all that bullshit. Of course, that didn't matter neither because GWB simply WANTED to invade.
Side note: Colin Powell always seemed like one of the more reasonable people in the Bush administration, and he had the decency to later criticize and apologize for his own actions.
I remember the set of his shoulders and generally pained body language during that address. He knew it was bullshit, and knew that the world could tell that he was bullshitting. They sent him because out of the four (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and Powell), he was the only one regarded as somewhat reliable.
He sold his soul that day and regretted it almost instantly. I agree that the people who put him up to it were also setting him up as they knew he already wasn't really with them on this thing. They were politicians, after all. I have no sympathy for the personal toll it took on him. He's a war criminal like the rest.
This is a somewhat disengenuous article. Initially the Whitehouse couldn't even explain why they were attacking Iran. They responded as if they didn't expect to be asked. Then they gave nonsense answers. Then eventually, Marco Rubio said the U.S. had attacked at the behest of Isreal. Nothing in those answers is about foreign intelligence, or strategy, or even something resembling a plan. The word plan imples the US has a goal. It does not. Isreal has a goal. The US is merely a conveyance.
The Israelis, the Saudis, and the Egyptians all have reasons to see their rival Iran smashed.
The Russians want to see the US dragged into a "Special Operation" and to have the global oil markets collapse so they can buoy their collapsing economy with oil money.
China is just watching it happen but ratcheting up propaganda.
This is painfully obvious to virtually everyone except the US taxpayer, or the shillbots that control their viewpoints.
This is not good for Israel either, certainly not Israel's civil society. It's about Netanyahu's personal goals of self-aggrandizement, which are ultimately not that dissimilar from President Trump's.
I think this article is agreeing with you. It's saying that it's not an "intelligence" failure in the traditional "military intelligence" sense of the word we expect, but rather it's an "intelligence" failure in "runaway idiocy" sense.
then they should have called it a "mental faculties" failure.
this is an attempt to make it look like the CIA or NSA fucked up, when we know damn well they knew Iran had been prepping to fight the US for decades.
this is a Presidential failure, or more likely, a Presidential Advisor failure. and "failure" in the sense that Stephen Miller or Steve Bannon have been pushing for this since day 1.
there is a reason no president ever decided to take a go at them until now, and we're seeing why
There's an interview somewhere on YT with a retired general, a really sharp guy, where he points out that the Pentagon has been wargaming this for thirty years and it always had exactly the same outcome, which is the one we're seeing now. The generals knew exactly what would happen. Problem is that there's a dementia patient and some of the most incompetent people ever to hold office running the show, not not educated, thinking people.
Maybe? Israel has wanted us to go to war in Iran since Reagan. They finally got a president stupid enough (or with sufficient leverage over) to do it. But I wouldn't say from the US's side that this has been in the works for decades.
Unless that self-interest involves "wanting to watch the world burn" as we trigger an almost fully unprecedented oil and commodity crisis that tanks the economy way worse than 2008 ever was, I'd say Hanlon's razor fully applies here.
That's exactly what it is; and it's worse than negligence for the Atlantic to pretend not to understand this*.
The phenomenon of the Epstein class explicitly calling wars and coups and crashes "full of opportunity" gets virtually zero analysis in Epstein-class owned media, and it's past time that people connect those two dots.
* Did I sign in to the Atlantic to confirm that they pretended not to understand this? No. But I would be shocked to be wrong.
When campaign contributors tell policymakers to jump, they ask, how high? Our policymakers are completely captured by a shadow government of individuals who are at odds with the interests of Americans. Occasionally their interests will coincidentally align with the people's interests, but the link is not intentional, because they don't serve the people any more than necessary to get elected, at which point, they serve the shadow government
Superficially, the article is right, intelligence services didn't get this wrong, and the administration made a bad decision despite having a good appraisal to hand.
But really, it's a values failure.
Wanting to make decisions that are good for America, and good for its friends, is a value. Putting people you are supposed to represent ahead of yourself used to be the kind of thing people would say mattered. It used to be a thing that leaders tried to demonstrate that they had carefully considered their decisions.
Once you have an administration that puts itself ahead of everything else, this whole thing makes sense.
This administration is full of insecure people who want to show how strong they are. You can see it in how they talk, and the constant stream of memes coming from the WH. It's incredibly juvenile, stuff like having Trump portrayed with a sixpack, beating up his enemies.
Strongman regimes have a tendency to try to steal the blind, to use a poker concept: bully the opposition into giving you a concession, by making super aggressive moves. Like picking pennies off a train track, most of the time you will win and the opponent will back down, EVEN if on paper the opponent tends to have the better cards, because a rational opponent will appreciate putting a lid on risk. This last bit is really important, because it means the bully learns that he can win despite rejecting advice.
So you can go around sucker punching people until it stops working, and there's a decent chance Iran is where it stops working. If it's not Iran, it will be the next thing, because they can't stop.
And to get back to values, too many Americans are unwilling to take responsibility for their country's actions. If you look at what causes discontent with the current Iran situation, it is things like gas prices. In other words, self-interest, still.
Joe Kent (the director of counterterrorism who recently resigned to protest the war) stated that US intelligence gathering in the Middle East is lacking, that the US has extensive intelligence sharing agreements with Israel, that the US relies on Israel’s superior intelligence in the Middle East, and Israel uses its position to bias US foreign policy in the region to further Israel’s geopolitical aims in the region - in this case attacking Israel’s adversary, Iran, even though it’s not in the US interest to do so. It seems that Trump really has thought this would be an open and shut war. The US does not gain by the war; nor does most of the world; nor do the Iranian citizens being bombed. Israel furthers its geopolitical strategy of destroying its neighbors, because that’s how its leadership defines security (and stays out of jail). One of the most obvious stupidities propagated in all this is the notion that Iran has been a regime waiting to be toppled by dropping bombs on its citizens, its schools, universities and hospitals.
One doesn't really need to go much further than this Daily Show compilation to see what happened [1].
As for Iraq, the article is just wrong. Here's a 1998 letter sent to then-president Bill Clinton urging him to invade Iraq [2]. The astute will notice this was 3 years before 9/11. Look at the signatories. They include:
- Donald Rumsfeld: future (and previous) Defense Secretary under George W. Bush who oversaw the invasion of Iraq;
- Paul Wolfowitz. Rumsfeld's deputy under Bush, arguably even more hawkish than Rumsfeld. He openly admitted Iraq was "about oil" and the WMD excuse was "bureaucratic" [3];
- Richard L. Armitage: Colin Powell's deputy at State during the Iraq war;
- Peter W. Rodman, an assistant Defense secretary under Rumsfeld;
There are other names there who are or were influential conservative journalists and "thought" leaders in the neocon movement eg William Kristol.
Whatever else you might say, intelligence didn't fail on Iraq (or Iran) for that matter. Political goals simply trumped everything else.
I throw out this observation more to be provactive than persuasive, but I haven't seen it elsewhere..
People before me have observed how Trump's moves all are ego driven, or self serving or serve Putin or Israel or gas companies, and I'm here to add to the mix a different conjecture.
Trump's moves all tend to increase inflation in a plausibly deniable way. Tarrifs, fed-fighting, wars, etc.
And that is a deeply unpopular but elite-viewed necessity for handling America's national debt.
Inflation allows the wealthy class to get away with extending government spending without admitting/pursuing austerity which was political suicide under Carter.
The wealthy shelter in their land and stock portfolios which keep growing unlike cash and also benefit from said spending, while ordinary people pay the extra regressive tax that is inflation. The elite can then turn around and blame the little guy for supporting Trump and their hands are clean.
Trump isn't even pretending to have a consistent, plausible reason to attack Iran. He never even set an actual strategic goal beyond blowing stuff up. It doesn't really matter what the intelligence said, since it had nothing to do with Trump's decision.
What happened was entirely predictable, as the article says. Iran using the Strait of Hormuz as leverage was an obvious consequences of putting them into a sufficiently precarious position.
It is to take attention away from Epstein. The illicit sex, blackmail, and money laundering empire is the largest in recorded history, and in one person's mind, worth "Weapons of Mass Distraction" and outright war crimes to cover up. The same can be said of destructive and nonsensical actions taken since January 2025.
In the case of Iraq, they lied on purpose to support the invasion. In the case of Iran, Trump just ignored the intelligence.
I do think the intelligence community is capable. For example, they warned of the Russian invasion weeks before it happened when all other European countries said it wouldn’t.
What I’m curious about is, how are Trump’s fans justifying this complete fuck-up to themselves? _Are_ they? Like, I assume so, because they tend to take whatever shit they’re given, but it’s hard to imagine a “this is good, actually” spin in this one.
87 comments
> America’s spies had told President George W. Bush that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted a nuclear-weapons program and that Iraq possessed biological weapons and mobile production facilities, as well as stockpiles of chemical weapons.
That's not true at all. The intelligence community reported that there were no weapons of mass destruction but then the White House got involved in the analysis and brought politics into it and changed the reports.
Most cities have graves, cemeteries, memorials were families still grieve and remember their dead.
Notably, Iran never retaliated with chemical weapons. Could have a common root cause that later led to a fatwa against developing nukes.
I am surprised that the lay American gets so surprised that they do not like the American administration so much.
Add to that the fact that US upended their parliamentary democracy with a sponsored coup, that the US shot down one of their domestic passenger jets in flight with no apologies forthcoming.
As was Iran-Contra. Oliver North should still be in jail, not a talking head on the propaganda channel.
> The Iran-Iraq war is one of the nastier parts of the 20th century post-WW2 era, with huge casualties, and has been somewhat tragically forgotten. Perhaps because it wasn't entirely the fault of the US
Nah, mate. We mainly remember the history that touches us. The Iran-Iraq war is surely not forgotten in their countries, but its impact on the West was limited, so we don't really talk about it.
> I am surprised that the lay American gets so surprised that they do not like the American administration so much.
Don't be. Most americans can't read above a 6th grade level
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier
Side note: Colin Powell always seemed like one of the more reasonable people in the Bush administration, and he had the decency to later criticize and apologize for his own actions.
He sold his soul that day and regretted it almost instantly. I agree that the people who put him up to it were also setting him up as they knew he already wasn't really with them on this thing. They were politicians, after all. I have no sympathy for the personal toll it took on him. He's a war criminal like the rest.
He still sold it in front of the UN -- he could have resigned.
Apologies don't make missiles go back in silos or resurrect dead people.
Made not a jot of difference. In Tony went anyway. Shame.
> Makes a mockery of any modern-day ‘protest’.
> Made not a jot of difference
Yeah, that’s probably why.
There does seem to have been a psyop. With them being the target.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Helmets_(Syrian_civil_wa...
The Russians want to see the US dragged into a "Special Operation" and to have the global oil markets collapse so they can buoy their collapsing economy with oil money.
China is just watching it happen but ratcheting up propaganda.
This is painfully obvious to virtually everyone except the US taxpayer, or the shillbots that control their viewpoints.
this is an attempt to make it look like the CIA or NSA fucked up, when we know damn well they knew Iran had been prepping to fight the US for decades.
this is a Presidential failure, or more likely, a Presidential Advisor failure. and "failure" in the sense that Stephen Miller or Steve Bannon have been pushing for this since day 1.
there is a reason no president ever decided to take a go at them until now, and we're seeing why
they could have put it in the headline, or first paragraph.
If this will stop, it will do so because of the threat to Kushner's investments in the ME.
To use a slight inaccurate historical cliche -- do you think Nero gave two hoots about whether Rome burned or not.
that's the goal of Project 2025. Put billionaires in power by owning everything.
The phenomenon of the Epstein class explicitly calling wars and coups and crashes "full of opportunity" gets virtually zero analysis in Epstein-class owned media, and it's past time that people connect those two dots.
* Did I sign in to the Atlantic to confirm that they pretended not to understand this? No. But I would be shocked to be wrong.
But really, it's a values failure.
Wanting to make decisions that are good for America, and good for its friends, is a value. Putting people you are supposed to represent ahead of yourself used to be the kind of thing people would say mattered. It used to be a thing that leaders tried to demonstrate that they had carefully considered their decisions.
Once you have an administration that puts itself ahead of everything else, this whole thing makes sense.
This administration is full of insecure people who want to show how strong they are. You can see it in how they talk, and the constant stream of memes coming from the WH. It's incredibly juvenile, stuff like having Trump portrayed with a sixpack, beating up his enemies.
Strongman regimes have a tendency to try to steal the blind, to use a poker concept: bully the opposition into giving you a concession, by making super aggressive moves. Like picking pennies off a train track, most of the time you will win and the opponent will back down, EVEN if on paper the opponent tends to have the better cards, because a rational opponent will appreciate putting a lid on risk. This last bit is really important, because it means the bully learns that he can win despite rejecting advice.
So you can go around sucker punching people until it stops working, and there's a decent chance Iran is where it stops working. If it's not Iran, it will be the next thing, because they can't stop.
And to get back to values, too many Americans are unwilling to take responsibility for their country's actions. If you look at what causes discontent with the current Iran situation, it is things like gas prices. In other words, self-interest, still.
As for Iraq, the article is just wrong. Here's a 1998 letter sent to then-president Bill Clinton urging him to invade Iraq [2]. The astute will notice this was 3 years before 9/11. Look at the signatories. They include:
- Donald Rumsfeld: future (and previous) Defense Secretary under George W. Bush who oversaw the invasion of Iraq;
- Paul Wolfowitz. Rumsfeld's deputy under Bush, arguably even more hawkish than Rumsfeld. He openly admitted Iraq was "about oil" and the WMD excuse was "bureaucratic" [3];
- Richard L. Armitage: Colin Powell's deputy at State during the Iraq war;
- Peter W. Rodman, an assistant Defense secretary under Rumsfeld;
There are other names there who are or were influential conservative journalists and "thought" leaders in the neocon movement eg William Kristol.
Whatever else you might say, intelligence didn't fail on Iraq (or Iran) for that matter. Political goals simply trumped everything else.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JC56Ltg5zDE
[2]: https://noi.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/iraqclintonletter...
[3]: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialist-vie...
People before me have observed how Trump's moves all are ego driven, or self serving or serve Putin or Israel or gas companies, and I'm here to add to the mix a different conjecture.
Trump's moves all tend to increase inflation in a plausibly deniable way. Tarrifs, fed-fighting, wars, etc.
And that is a deeply unpopular but elite-viewed necessity for handling America's national debt.
Inflation allows the wealthy class to get away with extending government spending without admitting/pursuing austerity which was political suicide under Carter.
The wealthy shelter in their land and stock portfolios which keep growing unlike cash and also benefit from said spending, while ordinary people pay the extra regressive tax that is inflation. The elite can then turn around and blame the little guy for supporting Trump and their hands are clean.
What happened was entirely predictable, as the article says. Iran using the Strait of Hormuz as leverage was an obvious consequences of putting them into a sufficiently precarious position.
Massively overplayed by unchecked power.