[Intelforum] Intelligence and International Law

Thu Aug 10 10:02:52 EDT 2006

From: "Bill Gross" <bgross at airmail.net>
To: intelforum at lists101.his.com
Subject: RE: Intelligence and International Law
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 19:22:01 -0500

MODERATOR'S Notes (Mike Dravis): After this post was submitted for
distribution, the Moderator made edits to the text as indicated by
the use of [brackets].

**********

Mr. D'Amato gives an excruciating analysis of what went wrong after 
the fact done in the comfort of an office thousands of miles away 
from the heat of battle.

He's very ready to assign blame yet in doing so he displays his 
ignorance of that very confusing world call war.  Considered what one 
old German had to say about such events he spoke of a thing called 
"friction."  He wrote this almost two hundred years ago yet it still 
really does ring true today.  Do read the second paragraph where he 
addresses how things that would appear to be simple aren't.  This is 
from the tome On War by Carl von Clausewitz.

"AS long as we have no personal knowledge of war, we cannot conceive 
where those difficulties lie of which so much is said, and what that 
genius, and those extraordinary mental powers required in a general 
have really to do. All appears so simple, all the requisite branches 
of knowledge appear so plain, all the combinations so unimportant, 
that, in comparison with them, the easiest problem in higher 
mathematics impresses us with a certain scientific dignity. But if we 
have seen war, all becomes intelligible; and still, after all, it is 
extremely difficult to describe what it is which brings about this 
change, to specify this invisible and completely efficient Factor.

Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is 
difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction, 
which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war. Suppose now a 
traveller, who, towards evening, expects to accomplish the two stages 
at the end of his day's journey, four or five leagues, with post 
horses, on the high road-it is nothing. He arrives now at the last 
station but one, finds no horses, or very bad ones; then a hilly 
country, bad roads; it is a dark night, and he is glad when, after a 
great deal of trouble, he reaches the next station, and finds there 
some miserable accommodation. So in war, through the influence of an 
infinity of petty circumstances, which cannot properly be described 
on paper, things disappoint us, and we fall short of the mark. A 
powerful iron will overcomes this friction, it crushes the obstacles, 
but certainly the machine along with them. We shall often meet with 
this result. Like an obelisk, towards which the principal streets of 
a place converge, the strong will of a proud spirit, stands prominent 
and commanding, in the middle of the art of war."

[Excision]

Bill Gross

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Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 9:09 AM
Subject: Re: [Intelforum] (1) Intelligence and International Law

Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2006 12:10:11 -0500

To: intelforum at lists101.his.com
From: "Anthony D'Amato" <a-damato at northwestern.edu>

Subject: Re: (1) Intelligence and International Law

In partial reply to Rocco Rosano:

In the recent Israeli attack on the apartment house in Qana
that resulted in the killing of 60 civilians the majority of whom
were children, Israel called a temporary halt to its air strikes
and investigated what went wrong.  Israel's conclusion was
that the missiles were fired at the house as the result of
faulty intelligence.

Taking that conclusion as true, the only blame that could be
attributed to the pilots of the F-16s that fired the missiles
was that they should have been more skeptical about the
intelligence.

But that matter aside, the intelligence agents who
provided the false information might themselves be
guilty of a war crime.  If they approved the house as a
military target without investigating the situation, their
wanton and reckless negligence could be tantamount
to the intentional causation of a war crime.  After all,
it was their job to check out the situation.

Sketchy reports have come in that, in fact, the
intelligence agents did not check out the situation,
but rather just assumed that all the civilians in Qana
had left town as a result of Israeli leaflets warning
them to get out.  Yet other factors should have been
assessed by the intelligence agents, including the
inability of the elderly, sick, and infirm to leave, the
lack of carriages or autos to transport infants out of
town, and most of all, the reports that the Israeli
air force targeted columns of fleeing civilians.  Whether
these reports were accurate is less important than
the fact that they were widely believed, resulting in
the decision by many families to seek shelter at
home rather than taking a chance on being killed
in an exodus column.

For those interested, I touched on some of these
considerations in a recent editorial in JURIST, and
I'm in the process of writing another editorial for
JURIST that will deal more explicitly with the
problem of guerrillas who hide among civilians. See
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/07/qana-war-crimes-and-pending-un.php ,

or if that hyperlink doesn't work, go to
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ and click around.

Anthony D'Amato
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