The UK has its own Larry Johnsons

Jeff Jacoby:

Three weeks before the London bombings of July 7, Britain’s Joint Terrorist Analysis Center advised policymakers that ‘‘at present there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack the UK.’’ That reassuring message from the country’s top intelligence and law enforcement officials, The New York Times reported last week, prompted the British government to lower its terror alert. Less than a month later, 52 people were murdered and 700 wounded when three subway trains and a bus were blown up in the worst act of terrorism the United Kingdom has experienced since the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.

Obviously this was a serious intelligence failure. Undoubtedly there will be investigations into the cause of the blunder. Perhaps heads will roll for failing to ‘‘connect the dots’’ in time to prevent the 7/7 atrocities. (Or perhaps not: CIA Director George Tenet not only retained his job long after Sept. 11, 2001, he was even awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.) Whatever is ultimately learned, we can safely assume, will promptly become political fodder for British partisans of every stripe.

But the botched terror assessment raises a question for us, too: Which kind of intelligence failure is better — the kind that badly understates a threat, such as the one in London, or the kind that overstates a threat, such as the insistent warnings before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein was armed with weapons of mass destruction?
There was more to the liberation of Iraq than an intelligence failure. One of the main reasons for liberating Iraq was Saddam's failure to account for his WMD as required by his cease fire agreement and numerous UN resolutions. His failure to account led to his demise as ruller of Iraq.

Larry Johnson is the former CIA guy who wrote an article on 9-10 discussing the declining threat of terrorism. Lately he has been an apoligist for the Wilson family's rogue activities at the CIA where they sought to undermine the US war effort in Iraq by leaking misleading stories. When caught, they sought to have those who blew the whistle on them thrown in jail. Larry Johnson recently spoke on behalf of the Democrats in this attempt to coverup rogue activities at the CIA and criminalize the whistle blowers in the Bush administration..

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