If our intelligence system is ever to get on the right track, punishing poor performance, as Obama has now done, is an essential step. It stands in sharp contrast to George W. Bush’s decision—perhaps the worst foreign policy mistake of his presidency—to retain George Tenet as CIA director in the wake of the massive intelligence failure of September 11. After the CIA’s estimate that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was revealed not to be exactly the “slam dunk” case that Tenet had advertised, Bush pinned the Presidential Medal of Freedom to his chest, a shocking reward for failure.
Was that a reward for failure? Sure, 9/11 was an intelligence lapse. But was the "slam dunk" on Iraqi WMD really wrong?
I'm willing to wait to see if the medal was a shocking reward for failure, or not. The last chapter is not written, in my judgment.
UPDATE: Well, this is quite the coincidence:
President Obama's choice to be the next director of national intelligence supported the view that Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq sent weapons and documents to Syria in the weeks before the 2003 U.S. invasion.
I suspect material and documents were still heading out of Iraq even after we toppled Saddam.
UPDATE: WMD do turn up in the strangest of places, even after many decades:
State and federal officials worked Tuesday to decontaminate a clam boat anchored in isolation off Massachusetts after it dredged up old munitions containing mustard gas, severely sickening a crewman.
It has not been that long since 2003.
