Intelligence and the Lack Thereof

First of all when you're trying to assess what an enemy is up to you pay your military and your intelligence people to prepare for the worst case. So intelligence by definition is supposed to be an ultimate example of worst-case thinking. The trouble with worst-case thinking is you begin to project threats and imagine threats as if they're real, and you begin to create responses based on those. Pretty soon you forget that you've imagined the threat.

--James Carroll, author of House of War

Mr. Carroll has written an interesting history of the Pentagon. A review of the book as well as an interview with the author is at Salon.com, here. (Note, if you're not a paying member of Salon.com, you'll have to watch a short ad before accessing their site.)

He also talks about the current looming crisis with Iran:

American tactical bombers are practicing the kind of maneuvers that are only used to drop a nuclear weapon. Well, even to pretend is wrong, because it violates the most important things put in place by Harry Truman, which is the use of nuclear weapons is unthinkable, and we'll never threaten a non-nuclear state with nuclear use. Well, we're threatening nuclear use, and we're apparently engaging in war games.

What do we expect the Iranians to do? Obviously they're going to dig in and accelerate their strategy. This is profoundly destructive. It's a profound betrayal of the government's obligation to protect us. It makes us more vulnerable to nuclear weapons than we were five or 10 years ago...

The Bush administration has already given Iran and North Korea every reason to get a nuclear weapon...

Rummy's Officer Trap

There has developed in the public discussion regarding the denouncement of Secretary Rumsfeld by retired officers a paradox that no one seems to address.

1. Retired officers are saying Rummy messed this up from start to finish (ok, that's a simplification).

2. The common criticism of these officers is one of two:
a. Why didn't you say something at the time? (i.e., it must not have bothered you then)
b. You're retired, what do you know? (i.e., you're not here now so you don't really know what's going on)

3. People from the military (whether they are experts familiar with military culture, the retired officers themeselves, and even current Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace) explain that if you don't like an "order" (by which I mean the handling of a situation by anyone above you) your choice is to either suddenly get behind it and carry it out, or retire.

So you don't like Operation XYZ, and you try to tell your COs that, politely and saying, "With all due respect..." a lot, but in the end they are going with Operation XYZ. They tell you, "Either shut up and do it, or retire and say whatever you want." So because you have a high moral character and can't leak the news or lead your men into disaster, you retire. Then you stand up and publicly say what you believe, and the Pentagon responds, "Well, you weren't publicly complaining at the time, so you must have been fine with it, and besides, you're out of the loop now so what do you know?"

Does anyone else think that is patently unfair? Your bosses give you an option and then attack you for taking it?