[Hat tip: Tech Central Station]
"The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms."The 'one hand, other hand' analysis is what one would expect from an institution that has been pilloried lately for drawing firm but incorrect conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And from an institution that was pilloried in the past for other errors in judgment: The CIA got the size of the Soviet economy wrong. It got the fall of the Shah of Iran wrong. It failed to predict India's detonation of a nuclear weapon. Indeed, intelligence analysis more often than not has a heavy quotient of C-Y-A. The ambivalence isn't motivated only by analysts' self-preservation instincts. It's also motivated by the fact that predicting world events with certainty is impossibly hard.
Intelligence is hard. I think Mark Twain said, "Prediction is very difficult -- especially about the future."
Intelligence deals with subjects that are very fuzzy, with facts people generally don't want you finding out, and with people who don't want to be identified. By the time you know the situation with any real degree of certainty, it's too late to act on the information.
Intelligence estimates therefore have a lot of wiggle room, simply because it's so hard to hit the target dead on. In addition, people who compile them, and who act on them, have to anticipate the worst cases. Given these pressures, I'd bet heavily against any intelligence estimate sounding optimistic.
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