A Little Intelligence is A Dangerous Thing

I was reading over the recent Seymour Hersh piece over at the London Review of Books and wondered what to make of it. I'd like to just concentrate on the meat of it--the president omitted the information that certain of the Syrian rebel groups may have had the capability of delivering a chemical weapons attack when making his case against the Assad regime.

This isn't the first time the question has been raised. (Questions about the Syrian rebels' capability and willingness to use chemical weapons is not really new.  ) I think the reasoning behind the Administration not including it in presenting the case to the American people is only alarming if we assume that the intel really was cherry-picked specifically with the intent to go to war in Syria.

Given that cherry-picked and full-on made up intelligence sent us to war in Iraq, I can see where that's a realistic concern, but I can't help but notice that we did not actually go to war in Syria. That Assad probably had more capability and reason to use chemical weapons just makes more sense to me. What fascinates me is having read back in August the possible rationale for rebels' use of chemical weapons would be to frame the Assad government in order to force US involvement (mostly from right-wing news sources). Maybe Hersh is lending some credence to that--but the deal that has the Syrian government disarming also means that if the rebels still have them, of what use would it be to them to even use them now?

I think the Obama Administration case against Assad (and only referring to Assad) was useful because the possibility that we'd assist the rebels was a credible threat to his government. Leverage was possible there, and threatening it propelled a diplomatic solution that de-escalated things. I don't know that that was the rationale behind the cherry-picked presentation. I just suspect. This also means I'm not sure how pissed-off I should be at them telling a sort of half-truth about this.