With the leak of a memo from Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith to the heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee detailing the relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq, the debate over this issue has heated up, again. Those skeptical of this relationship, including various intelligence insiders, insist that the data presented in the 16-page memo that cites 50 specific items is taken out of context – that the meetings described were insubstantial. The term used is cherry picking – that is finding bits of data supporting one point of view while ignoring others. Intelligence professionals, with their training, experience, and objectivity are supposed to be able to overcome this tendency and arrive at an accurate picture. This is supposedly just another part of the ongoing feud between the Bush Administration’s political appointees and the career professionals of the foreign policy community.

The first thing to understand is that intelligence is a very murky business. The information available is massive, but often suspect. Looming over any conclusion is what is not known and cannot be factored in. Intelligence analysis is probably more comparable to hitting a baseball, where being right a decent fraction of the time is all that can be hoped for. All intelligence agencies have major failures in their history and even if the CIA were the absolute best (few would argue that, although it faces greater challenges than any other intelligence agency in the world) it is still likely that in any given situation they could be wrong! Most famously, they were far off in guessing the size and efficiency of the Soviet economy for decades. The growth of radical Islam seems to have caught them a bit unawares as well. To hold up the CIA analysts as the best arbiters of the situation is, based both on past performance and on the very nature of work, is a bit unwise.

On the specific issue of Iraq-al-Qaeda relations the CIA’s argument was that secular Saddam and Islamist bin Laden could not cooperate because of the ideological barriers between them. This is patently false. A cursory examination of Middle East politics would show that ideological differences have rarely been a barrier to cooperation between different factions and groups. Secondly, the label secular is applied indiscreetly. Throughout the Middle East, Islam permeates the society and daily life on a scale that is difficult for westerners to imagine. There are a few examples of avowedly secular groups – often heavily Christian – such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (the PFLP – which, when Soviet support dried up began cooperating with Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.) But in most cases, secular is not strictly accurate. Arafat was a Muslim Brother, and has readily appealed to Muslim history and unity throughout his career. The secular Baathists of Syria support Hezbollah and is allied with Iran, and the Syrian constitution refers to Islam is central to the Syrian state. Saddam built the world’s largest mosque in Baghdad and has appealed to Islamic history when it suited his purposes.

Open enemies at war with each other may not cooperate – Saudi Arabia would not support the PFLP because it calls for the overthrow of the Arab monarchies. But otherwise sharing enemies will trump ideological differences every time and bin Laden and Saddam shared a big enemy – the United States.

With this background, the basic assumption should have been the opposite - that given their overwhelming shared interests Saddam and bin Laden were obviously in cahoots. If they were not cooperating – that would be the ore difficult to explain anomaly!

That being said – Saddam was not the leading supporter of al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda had links throughout the Middle East. A much savvier play by the CIA analysts would have been to develop a memo weighing the different links between al-Qaeda specifically and terrorism in general and the various regimes of the Middle East. Iran and Syria would have been far higher on the list than Iraq. More problematic would have been Pakistan, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia all of which have extensive relationships with terrorists but are – sort of – U.S. allies.

From a patriotic standpoint this could have opened a responsible debate about what countries the U.S. should have focused on. Maybe there would be U.S. troops in Damascus or Tehran now – although there were plenty of reasons to remove the loathsome Baathists of Baghdad.

This could have been a helpful debate – and maybe a different target would have been selected. For my money, there are more terrorists per square inch in Lebanon than almost anywhere. Liberating Lebanon would have been a devastating blow to Syria and Iran, and freed the Lebanese people from a blatant foreign occupation. As for building democracy – Lebanon had a functioning one in living memory. And, being much smaller than Iraq, invasion and reconstruction would have been much, much cheaper.

From a more cynical standpoint a memo admitting al-Qaeda-Iraq connections while highlighting Osama’s many, many other state supporters could have been used to create a paralyzing gridlock of debate and stalled any ambitious American action.

Either way, the professional analysts of the CIA (and various other foreign policy mandarins inside and outside government) could have played it much smarter. But instead they stuck to a false mantra – and that may be at the heart of the problem.