About a new Frontline episode that sounds like another must-see.
"The Dark Side" is an extensively reported, if visually dull, summation of the infighting, bureaucratic kneecapping and preconceived notions that led the United States to its invasion of Iraq. Its portrait of the triumph (or perhaps "triumph") of Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over the administration's internal war skeptics could have been subtitled "How Dick and Don Rolled the CIA and State Department and Got Us Into This Mess."
The 90-minute documentary, part of PBS's "Frontline" series, contains a few things that are new and a few things that are surprising, but it's mostly about context and historical sweep. The program's central thrust -- that Cheney and Rumsfeld maneuvered the nation to war, sometimes using dubious evidence -- won't surprise anyone who's been paying attention for the past few years. But it should serve as a reminder of the arrogance of power and the manipulation of information to suit questionable aims.
"The Dark Side" draws its title from Cheney's characterization of government intelligence activities, but "Frontline" probably won't mind if viewers mistake it for a description of Cheney's prewar machinations. Apparently jealous and suspicious of the CIA's rising stock after the invasion of Afghanistan, the vice president and his old chum Rumsfeld sought to control the run-up to the next war. To that end, according to the show, they stocked key government agencies with loyalists, created a separate intel fiefdom inside the Pentagon to end-run the CIA, leaked selective information to the media (Judy Miller, white courtesy phone) and elevated such unreliable sources as Ahmed Chalabi to "truth-tellers."
A tone of deep regret (and 20/20 hindsight) hangs over the comments of the many ex-spooks, authors, journalists (including several from The Washington Post) and mostly disillusioned former administration officials who are interviewed. There's a stunning reflection by a former senior CIA analyst, Paul Pillar, who wrote a white paper assessing Iraq's prewar weapons programs. The paper (a public version of the CIA's hastily prepared, deeply flawed National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq) helped sell the administration's prewar case. A plainly regretful Pillar now says of his work, "It was clearly requested and published for policy advocacy purposes. . . . The purpose was to strengthen the case for going to war. Is it proper for the intelligence community to publish papers for that purpose? I don't think so and I regret having had a role in it."http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061901485.html
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