Travails of Intelligence Assessment: From Failed to Fertile Imagination

September 11, according to the Commission that investigated that catastrophic event, was a result of a failure of imagination. Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, on the other hand, could be characterised as a case of fertile imagination exhibited by US intelligence and the George W. Bush Administration. Intelligence failure is the facile answer given to describe what went wrong in both cases. This article offers a more nuanced answer that takes into account the political context in which the threat posed by Osama bin Laden was analysed and acted upon. In the case of Iraq, the article details the pre-determined orientation of several senior members of the Bush Administration to effect regime change in Baghdad and how this inexorably traversed down the line within the US intelligence bureaucracy.