I am reading Douglas Feith’s “War and Decision”; his detailed account of the meetings and policy decisions after 9/11. Feith was Under Secretary of Defense reporting directly to Donald Rumsfeld. While his personal perspective is tilted toward the Department of Defense, it includes many documents that supports the story.

While there are many lessons to be learned from this period in history, one is the irresponsible reporting that perpetuated numerous distortions and lies about the adminsitration’s actions and decisions. Opinion mongers in the media may have been seeking partisan justice, but there needs to be some objectivity in reporting facts. Yet even opinion columnists do not have the right to create facts, and incriminating statements should at least motivate a reporter to get both sides before they rush to press with a “gotcha” story.

Yet once a distortion or lie gets traction in the media, it quickly gets repeated and becomes the accepted truth. The damage to our foreign policy and military is enormous. Many policy meetings spend enomous time on wording and statements often trying to second guess how the media will play their words.

Doug reports more than accuses, but it is hard to miss his dissappointment with the quality of the intelligence from the CIA, not just about WMD stockpiles, but about numerous other intelligence details in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also seems dissapointed in the performance of Colin Powell, and his insistence on focusing his address to the UN on the WMD stockpiles, when the real concern with Sadaam was much more extensive.

It is not surprising that Feith is generally complimentary of Rumsfeld, but he understands that he was an intense intellect and extremely demanding of those around him. His relationship with military leaders was strained, but he did not micromange as much as he simply demanded clarity in thinking.

But there are lessons here on the interplay of the main agencies. Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, Tenent as Director of the CIA, and Powell as Secretary of State had many disagreements and some turf disputes. This is good to the extent it created a lot of questions and thoughts on the precarious course of action; but it is bad when confidential and classified discussions were leaked and aired in the media without the whole story.

Before a course of action there is plenty of room for debate, but once the decision to proceed is made there needs to be a unified leadership. According to Feith, Bush tolerated press leaks from critical confidential meetings when the perpetrators should have been immediately terminated. In an effort to have a unified controlled message, Bush failed to explain the foreign policy to the public, and allowed numerous distortions to become fact in the public’s collective mind.

Feith clearly buries the perception held by too many that the Iraq War was recklessly pursued without broad discussion and planning, while the idiot lying Texan simply ignored all of the information and intelligence that contradicted his preordained plan to get Sadaam. Regardless of the errors that were made and in spite of the many successes that also transpired, this course was carefully considered and discussed by the CIA, Defense, State, and both houses of Congress.

The history on Iraq is just starting to unfold and Feith has made an excellent early contribution.

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