In China’s Great Cultural Revolution, landlords and other capitalist roaders were paraded through the streets wearing dunce caps. The 20,000 analysts in the U.S. intelligence community whose job it is to make sense of the world for the U.S. government are all now compelled to “wear cards around their necks reminding them to remain ‘independent of political considerations.’”
That, at least, is what the Los Angeles Times reports today in a lengthy puff piece about Thomas Fingar, the director of analysis at the ODNI and the fellow who drafted the egregious National Intelligence Estimate of last December that stated, misleadingly, that Iran had halted its nuclear-weapons program in 2003.
The article also describes some of the training new analysts are given in a six-week course called Analysis 101.
During a recent class in northern Virginia, students from a dozen agencies formed teams to work on a war scenario. It was their first day of class, but many seemed to have arrived having absorbed the lessons of Iraq.
Dissent was encouraged. Attempts to goad students into policy debates were rebuffed. As one young analyst went through the mock exercise of briefing a general who was considering an invasion, she offered a pointed warning.
“Once you go into a country and take it over,” she said, “it would be best to have a plan.”
Perhaps a better name for the course is “Analysis for Dummies.”
There are some outstanding people in the U.S. intelligence community, and the fact that we have not been hit a second time after September 11 is testimony to their achievement.
But the stars appear to be those doing operational work, keeping the terrorist watch lists in order, running covert operations, and managing drones armed with Hellfire missiles in places like Waziristan.
Analysis remains a chronic weak spot; the products of this side of the intelligence house are typically either irrelevant or wrong. Indeed, the more one learns about what is going on there, the more convinced one becomes that the CIA and other spy agencies should be concentrating their efforts on purchasing (they are available for a good price in China) 20,000 dunce caps. These would be a good complement to the cards analysts are now required to wear around their necks. Fingar — and his deputy Richard Immerman – should be at the head of the parade.
Keep that hasbara coming, Max!
Dogs should not be beaten, just firmly put in their place. But you should only reward desired behavior. If you yank the leash and then give them a treat they will just get confused. So I hope Israel did not deliver food until AFTER the shops were unshuttered.
Seth, exactly right. Hamas believes the same thing. Those Israelis only understand force!
What kind of genocide is this?
All I see is a pudgy, incompetent arab population, growing in numbers by leaps and bounds.
Can it be that the true spiritual heirs of the Nazis are the ones who pledge to cleanse the area of Jews, have leaders mentored by proteges of SS Commandant Haj Amin Al Husseini, and even use Nazi salutes?
Nah. How can our thinking liberal elites have it so wrong?
dboyd you evidently suffer from a reading disability (you’re not the only troll on this blog with that problem). I clearly implied that force should not be gratuitous but rewards and punishments rationally and promptly administered. Dog training 101. Hamas believes in extermination at the first available opportunity. If you think there’s symmetry there, you are, well, you are what you are.
Israel’s leadership is obtuse about a lot of things. But one thing they have clearly learned is that their enemy’s main weapon is not guns or rockets but the marshalling of international and media opinion by an eagerly accomodating audience. While Israel will never win the propaganda war, and will always be accused of massacres and widespread devastation, and while the international propaganda will milk every perceived transgression for everything it’s worth, Isreal at least understands the framework in which it fights even if the international media doesn’t care.
The fact that “[m]ost of Gaza, especially the capital, Gaza City, remains largely intact” will be more reason than ever for jihadists to hate Israel. If Gaza City is standing, jihadists can claim that Israelis are weak and cowardly and should be despised for their weakness even more than they are for being strong and destructive.
That is a problem George. However, if the technical means are available to achieve the necessary military objectives without gratuitous distructions there will inevitably be a problem. Using all required force to achive such destruction as is needed to give reasonable assurance of safety but do not destroy simply for the purpose of getting a message across. It is desirable to maintaing the ACTUAL moreal high ground (as opposed the the perverted version held by the “international community) and in this instance the very precise and restrained nature of Israel’s repsonse and the barbarity of Hamas’ “defense” have placed Israel in an even more formidable moral posture (for all the good it will do them).
Max maybe you should vacation in Gaza, and enjoy the benefits that the people there enjoy every day – unable to travel in or out, unable to export there products or inport what they need, being targeted by the Israely troops, etc. And, Max those pleasures did not did not start with Hamas.
Joe
Thank you for your help!
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.