I wrote:
> While it's certainly possible that the government should have known
> what was coming, the fact remains that it did not. In fact the story
> of American military intelligence is largely the story of repeated
> failures, I would argue. We didn't predict Pearl Harbor. We didn't
> predict the first Korean War. We didn't predict the fall of the Shah
> Iran. We didn't predict the fall of the Soviet Union. We didn't
> predict the fall of the Soviet Union. We didn't predict the Iraqi
> invasion of Kuwait.
Jeroen wrote:
>You mean, after decades of failing to predict several major events, the
CIA
still hasn't reorganised itself into an organisation that's actually
capable
of doing what the taxpayers are paying them for? Yikes...<
One could also say - it's really hard. The United States has interests and
assets in every corner of the globe. The signal-to-noise ratio by itself
is astounding. Presumably the intelligence agencies of other countries are
staffed by people not less intelligent than those in our own. They are
also usually less restrained about things that they won't do, as the
history of even British intelligence shows. That makes the CIA's job even
harder. Americans make lousy spies, as far as I can tell. Even given the
extent of the resources devoted to the tasks at hand, the CIA has an
essentially impossible job. It gets even worse when you realize that we
only hear about their failures. Almost by definition if an intelligence
operation succeeds, you don't hear about it.
> The argument that we can stop a North Korean invasion because we would
> know about it in advance, given that rather dismal record, is nothing
> less than absurd.
More Jeroen:
Given that I wasn't aware that the CIA was *that* bad at predicting major
events, (or *that* good at completely failing to see them coming), I think
it's somewhat over the top to call that statement "absurd".
Jeroen
If you're going to accuse a country of something as drastic as crimes
against humanity, then support your arguments with the contention that it
can predict everything, it behooves you to know something this basic, it
seems to me.
Gautam
