The hotel where Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, was staying was hit by rockets over the weekend. The New York Times quotes an unidentified source who says that there was "specific intelligence" that a rocket attack on the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad (a "highly protected target", according to the Times) was imminent. Nevertheless, no specific precautions were taken. [link]

The Times' reporting leads to many questions. Among them are these: if you have "specific intelligence" that an attack is imminent, why do you do nothing about it? Worse, if you know an attack is imminent and the Deputy Defense Secretary is checking into the hotel, how do you not warn him or move him to another location?

Another series of interesting question comes from the location of the homemade rocket launcher. According to the Times, the launcher, which was on a trailer made to look like a portable generator, was left at a cloverleaf interchange that had been closed by American forces. How was a car able to stop and unhitch a trailer on a closed interchange? Meanwhile, some of the rockets in the launcher were "new" French-made missles, that were likely purchased after the arms-embargo had been imposed on Iraq. Where did these missles come from? Since some of them were unfired (due to electrical malfunctions), they should be traceable -- will there be any prosecutions of the arms dealers? And are there more missles out there?

I'm no expert, but it seems to me that there was an intelligence failure of massive proportions here, which means that the attacks can't be dismissed as merely the vicissitudes of war (sometimes, you know an attack is imminent, but can't do anything about it except brace for impact. That doesn't seem to be the case here). Can we expect any kind of investigation? Unfortunately, the Bush administration's track record on investigating intelligence failures is, shall we say, sketchy at best. Doesn't give you a lot of confidence, does it?