Transcript
KENNETH POLLACK: I thought that I would touch on three different aspects of the war, all of which have potential ramifications for moving forward, also nice at this point to look back on them. I thought I would talk about the intelligence issue a little bit, talk about Iraq itself, and then also talk a little bit about the impact of the war on some of the other regional governments, try hard not to talk too much about that because that's going to be where Shibley is going to focus I think most of his efforts. I'll take a slightly different tack.
With regard to the intelligence issue, you know, a lot of you have heard me on this issue. For those of you who've read the Atlantic piece, you've gotten probably the fullest exposition of my feeling about that.
I've done any number of TV and radio and print interviews since then which give you, unfortunately, only little snippets and take the chunk that they like.
For me, the intelligence issue is a very complicated one. It's also an extremely important one. I think that we have a real problem as a result of the intelligence failures on Iraq, and my concern is this. I don't think that the rest of the world in terms of their governments disbelieves the United States and will simply disregard whatever intelligence the United States comes forward with at future dates.
I think that's a concern that a lot of people have. My own sense, both in talking to foreign officials, talking to U.S. officials is that, you know, the foreign governments, by and large, understand what happened, and they are still willing to work with us on the basis of our intelligence, recognizing that our intelligence is never perfect and that there are always issues with all intelligence.
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