At 12:54 PM 8/22/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>At 09:08 PM 8/21/2001 -0400, John Garcia wrote:
>
>One can make a case that the government did know (or should have suspected)
>that the invasion was imminent. See Atkinson's Crusade or Trainor's The
>General's War.
>
>john
>
>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 of Iran. We didn't
>predict the fall of the Soviet Union. We didn't predict the Iraqi invasion
>of Kuwait. 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.
>
>Gautam
On the face of it, you have a point. However, since there is rarely (if
ever) a message stating that "Such and such will be attacked at this time
in this place", I would argue that failure is predict an invasion or attack
has been largely due to factors having nothing to do with collecting
pertinent information. Many political and military leaders involved have
often discounted reports and intelligence indicating attack, or the system
provided for disseminating such information to those leaders broke down, or
the leaders just don't think it can happen. One of the reasons the Imperial
Japanese Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor was successful was the fact that no
top ranking Army or Navy officer, or any of the top level civilian leaders
ever thought that Pearl Harbor would be attacked. They all believed that
war with Japan would happen any day now, they just all expected it to begin
in the Phillipines. Stalin was totally surprised by Hitler's invasion of
the Soviet Union, even though he had been warned by the Allies, and his own
intelligence networks in Germany. He did not believe the warnings because
they ran contrary to what he believed was happening.
I believe that given a timely warning, invasions and attacks can be stopped
through diplomatic or military action. But I think that would mean that not
only would the intelligence have to be gathered, analyzed and disseminated,
but that political and military leaders would draw the "correct" conclusion
from this intelligence and take the "correct" action. A tall order indeed.
Given these requirements, to depend on intelligence alone for defense is folly.
john
(i wanted to send this sooner, but Active Directory, Code Red Worm, and
some balky servers have taken up much of my time)
