[6] In the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Shulsky was the Director of the Office of Special Plans (OSP), which served as a source of intelligence.
"[9] Gordon R. Mitchell, writing in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, stated, Shulsky’s cell stovepiped dubious intelligence purchased from Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress to senior administration officials, fundamentally distorting policy-making on topics ranging from the threat of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program to the cost of postwar reconstruction in Iraq.
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Shulsky ran the OSP with a clear agenda, to support the efforts of his fellow neoconservatives.
[14] In his position at OSP, Shulsky "directed the writing of Iraq, WMD, and terrorism memos according to strictly supervised talking points"[15] and granted them approval.
The talking points included statements about Saddam Hussein's proclivity for using chemical weapons against his own citizens and neighbors, his existing relations with terrorists based on a member of al-Qaida reportedly receiving medical care in Baghdad, his widely publicized aid to the Palestinians, and general indications of an aggressive viability in Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program and his ongoing efforts to use them against his neighbors or give them to al-Qaida style groups.
Saddam Hussein had harbored al-Qaida operatives and offered and probably provided them with training facilities—without mentioning that the suspected facilities were in the U.S./Kurdish-controlled part of Iraq.
Saddam Hussein had not been seriously weakened by war and sanctions and weekly bombings over the past 12 years, and in fact was plotting to hurt America and support anti-American activities, in part through his carrying on with terrorists—although here the intelligence said the opposite.
[12]George Packer,[16] Franklin Foer of The New Republic,[17] and Mitchell all compare the OSP failures to the problems in the mid-1970s Team B competitive intelligence analysis, with Mitchell noting Shulsky "worked on the staff of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee that reviewed the original Team B exercise during the Cold War.
"[13] In 2006, Shulsky was working in the Pentagon at the Iran desk as "senior advisor to the undersecretary of defense for policy, focusing on the Mideast and terrorism.
[21] In Silent Warfare Shulsky and Schmitt write, "social science can provide the facts ... but policy makers have a monopoly on choosing the values to be pursued".