PERSPECTIVE ON THE POSTWAR CRISIS : Who Was Dumb on Intelligence? : Did Bush receive--or ignore--the analyses that warned of Hussein’s staying power and the Shiite-Kurd disaster?

Although the Democrats were wrong to oppose America’s war against Saddam Hussein, they have every right to second-guess the Administration’s handling of the postwar endgame. The issue is not simply whether the Shiite-Kurdish refugee disaster takes the luster off President Bush’s historic victory; it’s whether the Administration was forewarned that a humanitarian nightmare would follow the victory and cynically chose to do nothing about it.

Administration sources familiar with the output of the intelligence community say that the CIA and other agencies predicted last October, in documents widely distributed in Congress and the executive branch, that a U.S. victory in the Gulf War would be likely to lead to a “Lebanon-like situation” with “massive humanitarian problems.” A full national intelligence estimate (the combined product of all U.S. intelligence agencies) predicted in January, just before the war started, that if Hussein’s army was defeated, unrest would break out along Iraq’s “traditional ethnic fault lines.”

In early February, two CIA publications--the International Economic and Energy Weekly and the Near East/South Asia Analytical Review--reported that postwar refugees might number as many as 1.5 million, and that Iraq’s neighbors were not prepared to deal with the flow. In February, two weeks before the war ended, the CIA told the Administration that a civil war was brewing, that opposition groups remained disorganized and that Hussein’s internal security apparatus remained intact. Within two days of the war’s end--and in spite of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf’s statement that “the door was shut” to escaping Iraqi tanks--U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly concluded that 900 tanks had escaped, along with a large number of Republican Guards.

About the same time, as the Shiite revolt was beginning, the CIA reportedly concluded that the outcome depended on whether the rebellion spread to Iraq’s military, 70% of which is Shiite, and to majority-Shiite Baghdad. If it did, the agency said, Hussein was in “mortal danger.” If it didn’t, he would prevail. Administration officials say that U.S. intelligence was skeptical that the revolt could succeed, because the Shiites were organized “mosque by mosque” and because their rebellion was not coordinated with the Kurds in northern Iraq. The Kurds rose up when Hussein pulled his forces south to fight the Shiites. When the Shiites were beaten, the forces returned north and clobbered the Kurds. Both Kurds and Shiites limited their chances of success by executing captured prisoners, thereby discouraging defections.

Reportedly, the intelligence community also warned that there was not much chance the Iraqi military would overthrow Hussein because he had purged it of potentially disloyal officers. And once the Shiites and Kurds started fighting, coup chances diminished further, because Hussein could rally his Sunni-dominated officer corps to protect their own rule.

It’s possible, of course, that the top level of the Administration simply didn’t see the intelligence, or that the CIA’s defenders overstate the agency’s prescience. Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has another theory: There was “a failure of intelligence,” all right, but it stemmed from “a closed policy process” in which Bush makes up his mind in the company of a small group of advisers and never asks the intelligence community what the consequences might be. Bradley thinks that Bush never inquired what might happen if he called upon the “Iraqi people,” as well as the “Iraqi military,” to oust Hussein.

Other Democrats contend that the Administration was willfully ignorant about the potential aftermath of the war because it refused to have any contact with Iraqi opposition figures. Had it established those contacts, cut off in 1988 after complaints from Iraq and Turkey, it would have known that the Shiites and Kurds intended to rebel, but that they did not intend to dismember Iraq--only to pursue greater autonomy. They say the United States could have helped the rebels--by keeping the war going for a few more days to destroy Hussein’s Republican Guards, or by shooting down Iraqi helicopters used against the rebels--without fear that Iran would emerge the new dominant power in the Gulf. Various Administration critics charge that the refusal to intervene was the result of pressure from Saudi Arabia, which wanted Iraq intact and under Sunni Arab control as a counterweight to Shiite Iran.

Administration officials have answers to many of these charges but haven’t been called upon to make them in a systematic way. On the betrayal of Kurds, aides say that Bush’s statements that the “Iraqi military and the Iraqi people” should overthrow Hussein were not intended to mean that the United States would militarily support the uprising, but exactly the opposite: that the United States would not do the job.

On the question of a secret Saudi agenda, officials say it was the Administration’s own desire to avoid a Vietnam-style “quagmire”--and not Saudi pressure--that led to the decision not to intervene militarily in Iraq’s civil war. Had the Administration shot down Iraqi helicopters, officials say, Hussein still would have beaten the rebels--unless the United States was willing to go after Iraqi tanks, artillery and troops.

Finally, top Administration officials are furious with outside critics who accuse Bush of callousness to the plight of the refugees. They say he privately agonized at TV pictures of their suffering. Since Hussein’s 1988 use of chemical weapons against the Kurds produced only 80,000 refugees, they ask, how could they have anticipated 2 million?

The Administration’s main defense, in other words, is that it was “taken by surprise” by the civil war, by Hussein’s devastating response, and by the massive refugee crisis, and that it responded as quickly as it could to unforeseen events. But this assertion is contradicted by the insistence of other officials who contend that the CIA provided many early warnings of the disasters to come.

What is clear is that something went badly wrong--bad intelligence, bad policy, or bad management. Perhaps the Administration had good information and made horrible policy choices. Or perhaps its information wasn’t so good. Either way there needs to be an investigation by Congress and a full accounting to the public.