| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article looks at specific instances of how the United Kingdom's strategic culture dealt with two specific perceived security challenges - Afghanistan as the home of terrorism and Iraq as the supposed possessor of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - and how the UK's cultural background both determined and misled those involved in the intelligence cycle. These were not new problems - the UK intelligence community had been aware of the potential for cultural bias for decades but repeatedly failed to learn the appropriate lessons. In the case of Iraq these endemic problems led to failures at all four stages of the traditional intelligence cycle - requirement-setting, collection, assessment and dissemination. The overall result was a loss of public confidence in intelligence which may have lessened its overall influence in the wider strategic culture for many years. However, the main blame attaches to the politicians who misused and abused intelligence to justify their purely political decisions to undertake aggression against a sovereign state.
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