Blogging
Blogging
By Daniel G. Jennings
Intelligence Failures
The latest news out of Washington is pretty disgusting despite the vast bureaucracies, incredible technologies and untold billions of dollars available to our numerous intelligence agencies, our leaders don't have much better information on our enemies than the predecessors before World War II.
A report from the Senate Intelligence Committee states that none of our intelligence knew what was going on in Iraq. Even though we've been watching Iraq for decades with satellites, spy planes and all manner of high technology, our spies didn't know whether or not Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
Since we aren't getting much better intelligence from the NSA, the CIA and the rest of the alphabet soup than FDR did from a few code breakers in the back room and a couple of amateurs snooping around dark alleys. We have to ask the question, is our massive intelligence community and the apparatus t hat supports it really necessary? Maybe it's time to shut it down and go back to the drawing board. Perhaps the money we spend on intelligence could be better spent elsewhere.
One more thought here, if our intelligence community is broken it's been broken for a long time. After all this was the intelligence community that failed to see the Revolution in Iran coming and get our embassy staff out before they were held hostage. The same intelligence community failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of Communism. This intelligence community didn't see the rise of the Taliban and its alliance with Al Qaeda as a threat to us. Most damning of all the intelligence community failed to detect the conspiracy that led to Sept. 11 and put a stop to it.
The worst part of this was that our politicians knew the intelligence community was broken and did nothing to fix it. Instead they let the spies and spooks keep taking our tax dollars and wasting them.
Perhaps what's really in need of a change is not the intelligence community but our political leaders.
Bin Laden
Perhaps the failure of the US military and intelligence community to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden and the rest of Al Qaeda's leadership is a good thing.
As long as Osama and company are on the loose the US and other nations will keep up the military pressure on Al Qaeda and it's allies. They won't be able to regroup, reorganize and launch new attacks against the United States and it's allies. We'll also have to keep up the security measures that protect America and Americans from terrorists.
If Bin Laden gets captured or killed, there will be almost immediate pressure to end the war on the terror. Military pressure will be lessened, security measures reduced and defenses lowered. The terrorists will be able to regroup and operate again.
Even though Bin Laden is simply one man and one leader in a mass movement. There are hundreds of thousands of terrorists and dozens of terrorist organizations around the world.
The minute Bin Laden gets taken out a dozen other lunatics will rise up to take his place and finish his work. Some of those lunatics maybe smarter, better financed and more sophisticated than Osama was and could be an even greater to us.
So perhaps it is a good thing that we haven't captured Bin Laden.