So Colin Powell will be going to the UN this coming week to show them more intelligence in support of the US claims as to Iraq.

The problems faced in this revelation -- and the touted reason for not having revealed some of this info earlier -- are multiple.

First, will it make a difference? It's unlikely that there are photos of Scud missles with little radiation trefoils. It's unlikely there will be transcripts of Saddam Hussein saying, "We are developing nuclear weapons, and the French have paid us off to use them against the US first." It's unlikely that there will be a signed inventory of biological weaponry.

The evidence is likely to be more circumstantial, similar to what's been uncovered in Iraq thus far -- discrepencies in declared inventories, paperwork that indicates continued weapons research, patterns of equipment and material purchases. There will probably be evidence similar to what's already been disclosed from dissidents, from Iraqi officials and scientists who have sought asylum, and so forth. There is likely a lot of this sort of thing, but ...

... it's unlikely, in sum, that there will be any one, single piece of evidence, a smoking gun if you will, that will be pointed at and force everyone to say, "Yup, he's doing that Weapons of Mass Destruction thang."

In other words, if it's something you want to ignore, if it's something you want to take piecemeal and say, "This isn't sufficient, this isn't sufficient, this isn't sufficient," you'll be able to.

Secondly, the nature of the evidence itself can give the Iraqis information. As we saw during the Cold War, when you let someone know that a particular phone line has been tapped, the other side stops using that phone line (and may track down the person who put the tap on).

There is a precedent here. In the late 1970s, an anti-detente CIA analyst leaked to the columnist Jack Anderson some transcripts of phone conversations from Leonid Brezhnev’s car, suggesting (or so the analyst thought) that Soviet delegates to the SALT II arms control talks were manipulating the treaty to allow them to keep building certain types of ICBMs that the American negotiators thought would be banned. After Anderson published the leak, the tap on the car disappeared — as did the Soviet mechanic whom the CIA had hired to install it.

Revealing intelligence information can also let everyone else know your capabilities. Items may be hid, for example, from a satellite that can track detail to 1m. If you show you can see things to a 10cm level, other folks who are looking to hide things know how well they have to do so.

Those are just some of the dangers of revealing intelligence info to the public (because, face it -- revealing it to the UNSC is going to be revealing it to the public). Against that has to be weighed the value. It's unlikely that folks who are not yet convinced (or who are, but who find it to their political advantage to profess not to be) are going to come into line. It's possible, on the other hand, that folks who are looking for an "out" from their stance will be able to use such information as an excuse. And folks who are wavering might actually be convinced, which, from a domestic standpoint, could be a positive thing.

We'll see this coming week.

Filed under :: Geopolitical Brouhaha
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Of course, maybe there are some smoking guns that can be waved around.