Seeking Lessons From Iraq. But Which Ones ? - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/world/middleeast/iraq-war-offers-lessons-for-syria-and-iran.html
En tout cas, concernant les prémisses de ses articles il n’y a pas de dilemme pour le New York Times, elles restent les mêmes.
The C.I.A., having missed critical nuclear developments in Pakistan and many other nations, did not want to be caught making the same mistake again. And Mr. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, were not exactly looking for alternative explanations, as Mr. Hadley indicated.
“The problem was that, with the Iraqi W.M.D., the policy makers wanted bad news,” said James Dobbins of the RAND Corporation, who has held many government posts. “They wanted to confirm that Iraq had W.M.D., and the intelligence analysts were inclined to move in that direction anyway,” since “it would be even worse if they predicted they didn’t have W.M.D. and it turned out they did.”
Mr. Obama’s team, while seemingly convinced that Iran wants a weapons capability, has stopped short of saying that any decision has been made to take the final steps toward a weapon. And the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, not wanting to repeat their most recent mistake, have been similarly cautious.
But in their more candid moments, some of Mr. Obama’s current and former advisers say they fear “strategic surprise,’’ the discovery that they missed something – a hidden nuclear facility, a decision by political leaders in Iran that they failed to pick up. In short, they fear making the error that worried leaders most before the bitter experience of Iraq.