Has the Bush Doctrine of preventive (“preemptive”) war affected the importance of intelligence?
It definitely has. The declared national security policy of the United States asserts that the U.S. is empowered to strike first to prevent (1) any other country or group of countries from mounting, even in the always ill-defined future, a challenge to U.S. military dominance; (2) any other country from providing support to or giving safe haven to “terrorists with a global reach”; or (3) a group or “cell” of terrorists or even an individual from acquiring or attempting to use chemical, biological, nuclear weapons or a radiological device against the U.S. homeland, troops or other citizens stationed, working, or visiting abroad, and friends and allies. Intelligence that points to any of these situations, thus “justifying” a U.S. military operation, must be absolutely correct. For once a military operation is launched, the absolute finality of mortality operates; soldiers and innocent people who are killed on both or all sides cannot be brought back to life. But as the wars of the first
