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The Fog Of "Everything": Why America's Eternally Caught Off Guard In The Middle East
Submitted by Tom Engelhardt via TimDispatch.com,
1,500.
That figure stunned me. I found it in the 12th paragraph of a front-page New York Times story about “senior commanders” at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) playing fast and loose with intelligence reports to give their air war against ISIS an unjustified sheen of success: “CENTCOM’s mammoth intelligence operation, with some 1,500 civilian, military, and contract analysts, is housed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, in a bay front building that has the look of a sterile government facility posing as a Spanish hacienda.”
Think about that. CENTCOM, one of six U.S. military commands that divide the planet up like a pie, has at least 1,500 intelligence analysts (military, civilian, and private contractors) all to itself. Let me repeat that: 1,500 of them. CENTCOM is essentially the country’s war command, responsible for most of the Greater Middle East, that expanse of now-chaotic territory filled with strife-torn and failing states that runs from Pakistan’s border to Egypt. That’s no small task and about it there is much to be known. Still, that figure should act like a flash of lightning, illuminating for a second an otherwise dark and stormy landscape.
And mind you, that’s just the analysts, not the full CENTCOM intelligence roster for which we have no figure at all. In other words, even if that 1,500 represents a full count of the command’s intelligence analysts, not just the ones at its Tampa headquarters but in the field at places like its enormous operation at al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, CENTCOM still has almost half as many of them as military personnel on the ground in Iraq (3,500 at latest count). Now, try to imagine what those 1,500 analysts are doing, even for a command deep in a “quagmire” in Syria and Iraq, as President Obama recently dubbed it (though he was admittedly speaking about the Russians), as well as what looks like a failing war, 14 years later, in Afghanistan, and another in Yemen led by the Saudis but backed by Washington. Even given all of that, what in the world could they possibly be “analyzing”? Who at CENTCOM, in the Defense Intelligence Agency, or elsewhere has the time to attend to the reports and data flows that must be generated by 1,500 analysts?
Of course, in the gargantuan beast that is the American military and intelligence universe, streams of raw intelligence beyond compare are undoubtedly flooding into CENTCOM’s headquarters, possibly overwhelming even 1,500 analysts. There’s “human intelligence,” or HUMINT, from sources and agents on the ground; there’s imagery and satellite intelligence, or GEOINT, by the bushelful. Given the size and scope of American global surveillance activities, there must be untold tons of signals intelligence, or SIGINT; and with all those drones flying over battlefields and prospective battlefields across the Greater Middle East, there’s undoubtedly a river of full motion video, or FMV, flowing into CENTCOM headquarters and various command posts; and don’t forget the information being shared with the command by allied intelligence services, including those of the “five eyes“ nations, and various Middle Eastern countries; and of course, some of the command’s analysts must be handling humdrum, everyday open-source material, or OSINT, as well -- local radio and TV broadcasts, the press, the Internet, scholarly journals, and god knows what else.
And while you’re thinking about all this, keep in mind that those 1,500 analysts feed into, and assumedly draw on, an intelligence system of a size surely unmatched even by the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Think of it: the U.S. Intelligence Community has -- count ‘em -- 17 agencies and outfits, eating close to $70 billion annually, more than $500 billion between 2001 and 2013. And if that doesn’t stagger you, think about the 500,000 private contractors hooked into the system in one way or another, the 1.4 million people (34% of them private contractors) with access to “top secret” information, and the 5.1 million -- larger than Norway’s population -- with access to “confidential and secret” information.
Remember as well that, in these years, a global surveillance state of Orwellian proportions has been ramped up. It gathers billions of emails and cell phone calls from the backlands of the planet; has kept tabs on at least 35 leaders of other countries and the secretary general of the U.N. by hacking email accounts, tapping cell phones, and so on; keeps a careful eye and ear on its own citizens, including video gamers; and even, it seems, spies on Congress. (After all, whom can you trust?)
In other words, if that 1,500 figure bowls you over, keep in mind that it just stands in for a far larger system that puts to shame, in size and yottabytes of information collected, the wildest dreams of past science fiction writers. In these years, a mammoth, even labyrinthine, bureaucratic “intelligence” structure has been constructed that is drowning in “information” -- and on its own, it seems, the military has been ramping up a smaller but similarly scaled set of intelligence structures.
Surprised, Caught Off Guard, and Left Scrambling
The question remains: If data almost beyond imagining flows into CENTCOM, what are those 1,500 analysts actually doing? How are they passing their time? What exactly do they produce and does it really qualify as “intelligence,” no less prove useful? Of course, we out here have limited access to the intelligence produced by CENTCOM, unless stories like the one about top commanders fudging assessments on the air war against the Islamic State break into the media. So you might assume that there’s no way of measuring the effectiveness of the command’s intelligence operations. But you would be wrong. It is, in fact, possible to produce a rough gauge of its effectiveness. Let’s call it the TomDispatch Surprise Measurement System, or TSMS. Think of it as a practical, news-based guide to the questions: What did they know and when did they know it?
Let me offer a few examples chosen almost at random from recent events in CENTCOM’s domain. Take the seizure at the end of September by a few hundred Taliban fighters of the northern provincial Afghan capital of Kunduz, the first city the Taliban has controlled, however briefly, since it was ejected from that same town in 2002. In the process, the Taliban fighters reportedly scattered up to 7,000 members of the Afghan security forces that the U.S. has been training, funding, and arming for years.
For anyone following news reports closely, the Taliban had for months been tightening its control over rural areas around Kunduz and testing the city’s defenses. Nonetheless, this May, based assumedly on the best intelligence analyses available from CENTCOM, the top U.S. commander in the country, Army General John Campbell, offered this predictive comment: “If you take a look very closely at some of the things in Kunduz and up in [neighboring] Badakhshan [Province], [the Taliban] will attack some very small checkpoints... They will go out and hit a little bit and then they kind of go to ground... so they’re not gaining territory for the most part.’”
As late as August 13th, at a press briefing, an ABC News reporter asked Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner, the U.S. deputy chief of staff for communications in Afghanistan: “There has been a significant increase in Taliban activity in northern Afghanistan, particularly around Kunduz. What is behind that? Are the Afghan troops in that part of Afghanistan at risk of falling to the Taliban?”
Shoffner responded, in part, this way: “So, again, I think there's been a lot of generalization when it comes to reports on the north. Kunduz is -- is not now, and has not been in danger of being overrun by the Taliban, and so -- with that, it's kind of a general perspective in the north, that's sort of how we see it.”
That General Cambell at least remained of a similar mindset even as Kunduz fell is obvious enough since, as New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg reported, he was out of the country at the time. As Goldstein put it:
“Mostly, though, American and Afghan officials appeared to be genuinely surprised at the speedy fall of Kunduz, which took place when Gen. John F. Campbell, the commander of coalition forces, was in Germany for a defense conference... Though the Taliban have been making gains in the hinterlands around Kunduz for months, American military planners have for years insisted that Afghan forces were capable of holding onto the country’s major cities.
“‘This wasn’t supposed to happen,’ said a senior American military officer who served in Afghanistan, speaking on the condition of anonymity. ‘The Afghans are fighting, so it’s not like we’re looking at them giving up or collapsing right now. They’re just not fighting very well.’”
It’s generally agreed that the American high command was “caught off guard” by the capture of Kunduz and particularly shocked by the Afghan military’s inability to fight effectively. And who would have predicted such a thing of an American-trained army in the region, given that the American-backed, -trained, and -equipped Iraqi Army on the other side of the Greater Middle East had a similar experience in June 2014 in Mosul and other cities of northern Iraq when relatively small numbers of Islamic State militants routed its troops?
At that time, U.S. military leaders and top administration officials right up to President Obama were, as the Wall Street Journal reported, “caught off guard by the swift collapse of Iraqi security forces” and the successes of the Islamic State in northern Iraq. Peter Baker and Eric Schmitt of the Times wrote in retrospect, “Intelligence agencies were caught off guard by the speed of the extremists’... advance across northern Iraq.” And don’t forget that, despite that CENTCOM intelligence machine, something similar happened in May 2015 when, as Washington Post columnist David Ignatius put it, U.S. officials and American intelligence were “blindsided again” by a very similar collapse of Iraqi forces in the city of Ramadi in al-Anbar Province.
Or let’s take another example where those 1,500 analysts must have been hard at work: the failed $500 million Pentagon program to train “moderate” Syrians into a force that could fight the Islamic State. In the Pentagon version of the elephant that gave birth to a mouse, that vast effort of vetting, training, and arming finally produced Division 30, a single 54-man unit of armed moderates, who were inserted into Syria near the forces of the al-Qaeda-aligned al-Nusra Front. That group promptly kidnapped two of its leaders and then attacked the unit. The result was a disaster as the U.S.-trained fighters fled or were killed. Soon thereafter, the American general overseeing the war against the Islamic State testified before Congress that only “four or five” armed combatants from the U.S. force remained in the field.
Here again is how the New York Times reported the response to this incident:
“In Washington, several current and former senior administration officials acknowledged that the attack and the abductions by the Nusra Front took American officials by surprise and amounted to a significant intelligence failure. While American military trainers had gone to great lengths to protect the initial group of trainees from attacks by Islamic State or Syrian Army forces, they did not anticipate an assault from the Nusra Front. In fact, officials said on Friday, they expected the Nusra Front to welcome Division 30 as an ally in its fight against the Islamic State.
“‘This wasn’t supposed to happen like this,’ said one former senior American official, who was working closely on Syria issues until recently, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence assessments.”
Now, if accurate, this is wild stuff. After all, how anyone, commander or intelligence analyst, could imagine that the al-Nusra Front, classified as an enemy force in Washington and some of whose militants had been targeted by U.S. air power, would have welcomed U.S.-backed troops with open arms is the mystery of all mysteries. One small footnote to this: McClatchy News later reported that the al-Nusra Front had been poised to attack the unit because it had tipped off in advance by Turkish intelligence, something CENTCOM’s intelligence operatives evidently knew nothing about.
In the wake of that little disaster and again, assumedly, with CENTCOM’s full stock of intelligence and analysis on hand, the military inserted the next unit of 74 trained moderates into Syria and was shocked (shocked!) when its members, chastened perhaps by the fate of Division 30, promptly handed over at least a quarter of their U.S.-supplied equipment, including trucks, ammunition, and rifles, to the al-Nusra Front in return for “safe passage.” Al-Nusra militants soon were posting photos of the weapons online and tweeting proudly about them. CENTCOM officials initially denied that any of this had happened (and were clearly in the dark about it) before reversing course and reluctantly admitting that it was so. (“‘If accurate, the report of NSF [New Syrian Forces] members providing equipment to al-Nusra Front is very concerning and a violation of Syria train-and-equip program guidelines,’ U.S. Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said.”)
To turn to even more recent events in CENTCOM’s bailiwick, American officials were reportedly similarly stunned as September ended when Russia reached a surprise agreement with U.S. ally Iraq on an anti-ISIS intelligence-sharing arrangement that would also include Syria and Iran. Washington was once again “caught off guard” and, in the words of Michael Gordon of the Times, “left... scrambling,” even though its officials had known “that a group of Russian military officers were in Baghdad.”
Similarly, the Russian build-up of weaponry, planes, and personnel in Syria initially "surprised" and -- yes -- caught the Obama administration “off guard.” Again, despite those 1,500 CENTCOM analysts and the rest of the vast U.S. intelligence community, American officials, according to every news report available, were "caught flat-footed" and, of course, "by surprise” (again, right up to the president) when the Russians began their full-scale bombing campaign in Syria against various al-Qaeda-allied outfits and CIA-backed opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They were even caught off guard and taken aback by the way the Russians delivered the news that their bombing campaign was about to start: a three-star Russian general arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to offer an hour’s notice. (Congressional lawmakers are now considering “the extent to which the spy community overlooked or misjudged critical warning signs” about the Russian intervention in Syria.)
The Fog Machine of American Intelligence
You get the point. Whatever the efforts of that expansive corps of intelligence analysts (and the vast intelligence edifice behind it), when anything happens in the Greater Middle East, you can essentially assume that the official American reaction, military and political, will be “surprise” and that policymakers will be left “scrambling” in a quagmire of ignorance to rescue American policy from the unexpected. In other words, somehow, with what passes for the best, or at least most extensive and expensive intelligence operation on the planet, with all those satellites and drones and surveillance sweeps and sources, with crowds of analysts, hordes of private contractors, and tens of billions of dollars, with, in short, “intelligence” galore, American officials in the area of their wars are evidently going to continue to find themselves eternally caught “off guard.”
The phrase “the fog of war” stands in for the inability of commanders to truly grasp what’s happening in the chaos that is any battlefield. Perhaps it’s time to introduce a companion phrase: the fog of intelligence. It hardly matters whether those 1,500 CENTCOM analysts (and all those at other commands or at the 17 major intelligence outfits) produce superlative “intelligence” that then descends into the fog of leadership, or whether any bureaucratic conglomeration of “analysts,” drowning in secret information and the protocols that go with it, is going to add up to a giant fog machine.
It’s difficult enough, of course, to peer into the future, to imagine what’s coming, especially in distant, alien lands. Cobble that basic problem together with an overwhelming data stream and groupthink, then fit it all inside the constrained mindsets of Washington and the Pentagon, and you have a formula for producing the fog of intelligence and so for seldom being “on guard” when it comes to much of anything.
My own suspicion: you could get rid of most of the 17 agencies and outfits in the U.S. Intelligence Community and dump just about all the secret and classified information that is the heart and soul of the national security state. Then you could let a small group of independently minded analysts and critics loose on open-source material, and you would be far more likely to get intelligent, actionable, inventive analyses of our global situation, our wars, and our beleaguered path into the future.
The evidence, after all, is largely in. In these years, for what now must be approaching three-quarters of a trillion dollars, the national security state and the military seem to have created an un-intelligence system. Welcome to the fog of everything.
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to many words, I'll simplify it for you,
Jews
Israel
Those 1,500 jobs are just welfare for dimwit relatives and kids of current jobholders in the War Complex.
Hmm yeah constantly caught off guard because its constantly at the beckon calls of these people's whims...
http://www.collive.com/show_news.rtx?id=12031
Good enough for government work.
CENTCOM is suffering from "information overload."
One question:
Who did they fire 14 years ago, in the wake of 9/11?
Never mind that they should have prosecuted some folks.
Hmm, destroying an MSF hospital takes a lot of planning AND information, so does guarding Poppy fields, so there's that.
Yep, article doesn't answer it's own question of "why".
Simple. Dot gov at every level is a part of the free shit army. They don't care. They are all second rate, competent only in ass kissing the next higher up. Same goes for the MIC, which provides toilet seats and hammers at a mark up that would make a bankster blush.
Afraid of the NSA. Don't be. I have no doubt they collect every byte of every communication in the solar system. I also have no doubt they have zero ability to make sense of it. If you are a politician or business leader, they will collect blackmail material on you. The other 7 billion of us are hidden in plain sight.
They are all government employees after all. How good can they be? All the good people with a conscience would have left as soon as they could.
That might explain why the political (zionist) urchins of DC are eternally caught off guard, but the military and to an even greater extent the intelligence services are JEW-FREE ZONES. If anyone really has a problem working with Jews then I would suggest talking to John Brennan about getting a job with his outfit- cushy .gov job security, ever increasing budgets and no Jews (except for the token they hang up to ward off the evil spirits of AIPAC).
As to why "they" are eternally caught off guard- too much money, too many people, too much job security, too much garbage in and too much garbage out. You could call it "political correctness" but that misses the point and you won't fix the problem unless and until you make them do more, and do better, with less. Somewhere, someone already wrote a memo long ago which laid out exactly what just did happen. In the early 1990s Senators Moinihan and Pressler were correct about Pakistan possessing multiple nuclear warheads, and yet the CIA, NSA, NRO and NIMA all were "shocked, shocked" when almost a decade later... Pakistan detonated a nuclear weapon in an environment of rising tensions with India.
Cut their damn budgets.
"...but the military and to an even greater extent the intelligence services are JEW-FREE ZONES..."
I could care less about Jews - they are as much of a threat to the U.S. as Amish or the Hopi. What concerns me is the Israeli-firster fucks, and that's where I would have to disagree with you, UR. The top ranks of the DoD are die-hard Israeli-firsters (regardless of religious affiliation). They HAVE to be or they wouldn't have the positions they have. It's all part of the incestuous DoD/MIC/Washington Beltway clan of neocon PNAC psychopaths. Stray one inch from that path and you're out. It's been that way for at least a decade, probably two.
Same with the CIA. No idea if Jews are over or under represented, but you damn well are not going to have any high level position without putting the interests of Israel above that of the U.S. Constitution. Why? Because all the mafioso you deal with in the U.S. government are Israeli-firsters and all the people on the Intelligence Committees are Israeli-firsters. The Israeli-firsters drink the same Kool-Aid as the PNAC/neocon crowd. In fact, they are one in the same.
The NSA is a bit of a hybrid. Israeli-firsters in all the senior positions, but also liked at the hip with Jewish mobsters and government contract whores.
Sorry - I know too many little-people Jews that are neither fans of Israel, nor aspire to government jobs or political office. They would love to be part of some worldwide Jewish wealth and power conspiracy (especially if it would help with the mortgage payments or put their kids through college), but they're not in that club and will never be invited. Yarmulke aside, they're debt slaves just like everyone else.
Applause. All the NSA traffic goes unfiltered to Israel!! SCOTUS, PUTUS and all the rest.
I think you are painting with a rather broad brush, but I have zero insight into the NSA. The CIA is run by CIA-Firsters, USA-Firsters and Israel-Firsters need not apply (or at least that used to be the case). But what ties the (non-USA firster) elements of the others together? Congressional approval. (sponsored by AIPAC®) John McInsane or any other nutter or shill can block the promotion of any flag officer for whatever reason. The foreign service is slightly more convoluted because Ambassadors require confirmation while career foreign service officers don't, and the intellectual schisms of career foreign policy wonks are not aligned with the intellectual schisms of Congress critters, but without a deep bench of non-Israel firsters Obozo could not have ordered the heavy lifting of his detente with Iran.
NSA is largely ex-mil intel people. NSA even sends recruiters around to various miltary facilities from time to time to pitch guys getting out. Modern military folks are perfect for the NSA. Especially lifers. If you've been in the service over a decade you've become so isolated from mainstream US society you might as well be permanently based overseas. Even in places like Ft. Hood, Ft. Campbell, Ft. Bragg, especially the large bases, except for using public roads to get from A to B military folks never leave the military eco system. Ever. You live on base, near the base, do all your shopping at PX / Commissary, medical, most recreational stuff. These are people who look at civilians increasingly with contempt.
CIA are Masters of the Universe worshippers. They'll never say it out loud, but they actually subscribe to Nazi Ubermensch theory, they're genetically superior humans who need to dominate the herd of humanity. Very CFR-type stuff. Hence the overreliance on recruiting predominantly from ivy league, the reliance on quantifiable data metrics that allegedly "prove" genetic superiority. Which is also why they get jus about every wrong. The Ubermensch belief system assumes societal decision-making is a top-down affair. CIA only looks at other global Ubermenschen, i.e., 1%er leadership types. Arab Spring, Berlin Wall type ground-up completely elude them because of this. Correction... nearly everything under the fucking sun eludes them because of this.
Add to that the myriad ways you can fuckup intelligence collection methodology through politicing, staking fiefdoms, compartmentalization... look... the entire intelligence game is one massive scam. That's all it is. A job security program for the MIC nerds too pussified to take down doors. Why you think they get all ballsy with this drone shit? Not too dangerous acting the tough guy from your reclining chair and monitor in some airconditioned trailer back stateside remotely piloting your killer drones.
I just figured the CIA people were mosly psychopathic control freaks. Goes with the turf and seems to be their usual MO. They're pros at identifying other psychopaths (like them) to do stuff like run Iraq. If the CIA needed a normal, healthy person to put in a position of power, they would have to outsource because they are incapable of recognizing one. I would love to know how good a job the analysts do there nowadays. Psychopaths - as a rule - make poor analysts UNLESS the object of their analysis is also a psychopath.
UR - I guess I'm judging CIA management by the people that leave and have a public voice. Stratfor, for instance.
"...USA-Firsters and Israel-Firsters need not apply (or at least that used to be the case)..."
That makes perfect sense for the little people coming in - I could see that.
But who leaves CIA management and has a public voice? Statfor has a couple of DSS guys and a door kicker from the 75th in senior positions. Retired Directorate Heads/DDCIs generally serve (quietly) on MIC advisory boards, there is a whole (non-revolving door) industry built around it and the regulations that require certain types of government contracting firms to have senior personnel with certain security clearances on payroll - so the retiree goes to a few meetings each year and is handsomely compensated.
Analyst level guys are free to believe almost whatever they want, and what they say (publicly) when they leave is pretty diverse. But when the (largely) Ivy League fresh meat is sliced and diced upon acceptance, only those 1% of the 1% who are Agency men get placed in the management fast track program, which is the entire candidate base for actually running the CIA.
"...But when the (largely) Ivy League fresh meat is sliced and diced upon acceptance, only those 1% of the 1% who are Agency men get placed in the management fast track program, which is the entire candidate base for actually running the CIA..."
Between the source (Ivy League) and their post-retirement or revolving-door job (MIC or lobbyists, think-tanks and advisory panels), I probably am doing just as you say and using a pretty broad brush. I never knew any ex-CIA higher-ups, so I'm afraid I'm inferring based on what comes out of the think tanks that claim attribution by ex-intelligence leaders. Their logic and analysis has a certain feel to it just like that of certain ex-Pentagon leaders. It makes what remains of my hair stand on end and is exactly why I never made a career out of the military. I simply could not work for these guys. I was never in danger of getting to those levels myself - I wasn't in 'that' club.
I'm also wrongly understood Stratfor was an ex-CIA spawn, not DSS. Now I'm trying to remember what made me specifically think that. In reading the Bio pages of their execs and analysts today, I would be hard pressed to find more than one or two suspects or make any link whatsoever. None of the execs or analysts seem to claim a CIA background. I was under the distinct impression that there was a strong connection for some reason.
There were proably a bunch of heads that rolled (along George Friedman's) after their corporate servers got punk'd... and there are probably now a handful of former CIA employees riding desks somewhere in the organization but who would they really serve.
When I was advising a foreign government in the run-up to Iraq 2.0 I was sent a lot of Stratfor's "product" which didn't necessarily comport with what I was getting from elsewhere, and Stratfor impressed me as Operation Mockingbird on steroids. Because the "thought industry" all subscribe(d) to Statfor, the CIA could amplify the feedback loop and better "conform" the minds that then inform/program the (delusional) Washingtonian puppets who think they control things. In short order I stopped reading the analysis and instead just skimmed the pages for facts and minor details that were advertently buried in the seeming BS.
Thanks for the insight, UR. Fascinating.
"...Because the "thought industry" all subscribe(d) to Statfor, the CIA could amplify the feedback loop and better "conform" the minds that then inform/program the (delusional) Washingtonian puppets who think they control things..."
Sounds familiar - same thing back in the day in the MIC/Pentagon self-sustaining circle-jerks. I'm too far removed from all of this now to do anything but guess when it's happening and only in the most general sense. I think I could have pumped out the appropriate overpriced spew and analysis back in the day and lived quite comfortably now. Seems kind of whorish, though. Maybe with enough opioids...
HEY - That's anti-semitic.
As a matter of fact, Obama and Kerry owe Israel an apology! The latest spew from DebkaFile:
Israel demands retractions from Obama and Kerry
DEBKAfile October 15, 2015, 1:06 PM (IDT)
Now I'm not the least bit suprised that psycho terrorist Nettanyahu would demand an apology. And - sadly - we know Obama and Kerry will willingly blow Nettanyau to shut that fucking psycho up. The really sad part is that current Israeli government is the modern-day equivalent of Nazis and are the most persistent human rights violators on the planet.
Likud and right-wing extremist Israelis are as much as a threat to mainstream Judiasm and the average Jew as Saudi Wahhabi extremists are to Sunni muslims and the average Sunni. Neither warped, extemist version of those religions has anything to do with the other 95% of normal, rational Jews and Sunnis. ALL forms of religious extremism should be eradicated from the planet, and that includes right-wing Nazi Zionist Likuds like Nettanyahu and his Palestinian 'Final Solution'. Remember - Nettanyahu is the only right-wing religious extremist terrorist on the planet with nuclear weapons.
Its really not all that foggy or mysterious-
years ago 'reasonable" middle-East governments did the math and decided selling their oil in dollar-denominated reserves ceased to be logical. Sometime around the year 2000.
The result has been a forced alliance between Fed.Gov and "unreasonable" insane radical extremists-who quickly realized that all they need to do to keep Uncle Sam on their side was promise him they would continue oil sales in dollars.
Unfortunatley their insanity has proven contagious-
"did the math" in this case, means recognising an offer that cannot be refused.
No, Israelis and Neocons. Lots of Jews oppose Israel's policies and very many Christians support them.
The problem is things involving people are not at all predictable.
https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/warning-ideas-are-dangerous/
"Now, try to imagine what those 1,500 analysts are doing..."
Pr0n?
just a guess...
Step one, kick hornets nest. Step two, insert thumb in ass. Step three, pretend to be surprised when stung.....
Because maybe we should not be there in the first place?
The "Deep State," that has developed almost total control over the American government, carried out the events on 9/11/2001, as an inside job, false flag attack, in order to get the "War on Terror" going as a self-fulfilling prophesy.
IF, IF, IF,
AND, they would discover what a small army of independent researchers have already demonstrated (some of whom post comments on Zero Hedge) concerning the apparently infinite tunnels of deceits regarding why and how American governments have been doing things in ways which make no sense from the perspective of the interests of the vast majority of the American People, but only make sense due to the ways that the biggest gangsters have captured control over the American governments, more and more, in ways which have driven those American governments to become the biggest organized crime gangs and terrorists on the planet.
However, those apparently infinite tunnels of deceits regarding the "Deep State," that are the covert puppet masters over the political puppets and the masses of muppets, go way, way deeper, as I laid out in my comments under this article:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-09/deep-state-source-all-negativity
The Deep State: Source Of All Negativity
Why America's Eternally Caught Off Guard In The Middle East is related to the basic problem with Neolithic Civilization. The social pyramid systems which were originally developed there, to become integrated systems of backing up lies with violence, have spread out and conquered the rest of the world. In a sense, the "fog of everything" is the return of the development of systems based upon backing up lies with violence to its birth place, as far as the continuity of history, through the dominate sociopolitical systems are concerned. The Anglo-American (Zionist) Empire has been developing fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems, which would enable controlling natural resources, as systems of debt slavery backed by wars based on deceits. The REASONS why the Anglo-American (Zionist) Empire is doing what it is doing in the Middle East are concerned with maintaining the monetary systems which control the natural resources of the Middle East. To the degree that integrated systems of lies can operate robberies, those then become socially successful. The biggest and best developed forms of organized crime operate their combined money/murder systems in order to claim natural resources and back those claims up with coercions.In my view, it is NOT possible to develop "intelligent, actionable, inventive analyses" without going through series of intellectual scientific revolutions, which apply to political science in general, and therefore, to the particular ways that manifests in the Middle East. From a sublime point of view, it makes sense that the Middle East has become the most psychotic place on the planet, due to its development of social pyramid systems based upon being able to back up lies with violence traveling all around the world, to come back home.
The Middle East is manifesting the most intense forms of the combined money/murder systems, based upon the maximum possible deceits and frauds, struggling to control natural resources through staking claims which can be backed up with coercions. From that point of view, it is mistaken to assert that "we should not be there in the first place," since "we" never left. Metaphorically speaking, our Western Culture traces back to Babylon. That is obvious if one considers how we measure time, using Babylonian conventions.
We are living inside of basically Babylonian bureaucracies. I.e., social pyramid systems based on being able to back up lies with violence, that development to become more sophisticated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence. The government of the USA is basically a military organization. The oldest book on The Art of War starts by saying that "success in war is based on deceits," and ends by saying "spies are the most important soldiers." Indeed, warfare was always organized crime on larger and larger scales, with the Anglo-American (Zionist) Empire having becoming the biggest of those, so far ... America led the way to develop the current globalized systems of electronic money frauds, backed by the threat of force from atomic bombs. Before that, America led the way to develop the petrodollar, which was based upon the American Dollar being backed by the American Military, as the primary ways that the Middle Eastern natural resources would have their claims staked and coerced.
In my opinion, there is NOT actually such a dense "fog of everything." Rather, to penetrate that "fog" one should perceive that all private property is based on backing up claims with coercions, with the most abstract form of that being that money is measurement backed by murder, because the debt controls depend upon the death controls. Social systems based upon backing up lies with violence have been developed at about an exponential rate for thousands of years. For a few Centuries, more and more "money" was made out of nothing as debts, in order to "pay" for strip-mining the planet's natural resources. Since petroleum was developed to become one of the most valuable natural resources, and relatively large amounts of the global supply was located in the Middle Eastern areas, the Anglo-American (Zionist) Empire has been particularly focused upon making and maintaining its combined money/murder systems to operate in that area.
The Middle Eastern areas were some of the last to be conquered by the European Invasions that conquered pretty well the whole world during the last five or so Centuries. Ironically, it was the Middle Eastern styles of civilization, based upon backing up lies with violence, that were perfected in Europe, that were able to spread out and conquer the rest of the world, including finally returning to the Middle East to conquer that area. Along the way, the system that conquered the North American continent, then led the way to become the currently dominate Anglo-American (Zionist) Empire that is attempting to keep its combined money/murder systems going in the Middle East at the present time.
Of course, those combined money/murder systems developed to become based on the maximum possible deceits and frauds, which is why there appears to be such a dense "fog of everything." However, personally, I find it somewhat ridiculous to assert the impossible ideals that "we should not be there in the first place." Rather, we are now stuck inside of the runaway systems of globalized electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs.
All of the dominate religions and ideologies have been developed in ways whereby they ended up being operated by the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites. Hence, the American "intelligence" community has become profoundly psychotic. The "Deep State" actually controlling the American government has become extremely compartmentalized, while those systems converge towards its pyramidion people, who have been historically selected to become the most psychopathic people possible.
My opinion is that natural selection pressures have driven the development of artificial selection systems to become based on the maximum possible deceits and frauds, for REASONS which are comprehensible and comprehensive. I do not think that the American "intelligence" community could do a better job unless it came to better terms with those REASONS: human beings and civilization necessarily live as entropic pumps of environmental energy flows. There is nothing but the dynamic equilibria of different systems of organized lies operating robberies. Due to that being the case, sets of consistent contradictions have developed, which appear as the "fog of everything," due to successful warfare being based upon backing up deceits with destruction, in which context the treacheries of spies were the most important phenomena, while all of that morphed to become financial success based upon enforced frauds, which enabled natural resources to have claims be staked, and backed up with coercions.
Intense paradoxes have therefore developed, due to social successfulness becoming based on triumphant organized crime, while the biggest bullies' bullshit world view more and more dominated things, thus driving everything to manifest in Wonderland Matrix Bizarro Worlds, where governments are necessarily the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, while their social successfulness depends upon the vast majority of people not understanding that, and not wanting to understand that!
I regard it as a naive, impossible ideal, to assert that "we should not have been there in the first place." (Although I agree with the sentiment.) THERE NOW EXIST GLOBALIZED SYSTEMS OF ELECTRONIC FRAUDS BACKED BY ATOMIC BOMBS. In that context, I regard what is happening in the Middle East as being mostly war between the old-fashioned form of organized crime known as Islamic States, versus the Western World's state religions, which are its combined money/murder systems.
My view is that the only better resolutions would be to keep on moving forward, to change to adapt Neolithic Civilization to become Translithic Civilization.
The USSA absolutely MUST be involved in the Middle East to ensure the continued support of Petrodollar Mercantilism and the hegemony of the USD with all the GCC countries.
Right. Of course.
Unless its over for the $.
Dis narrative be strange. Fust, America gots been pullin' de strings in de Middle East fo' decades. Second, America be unchallenged in de Middle East. Russia be small potatoes and China duzn't dare meddle in de hot zone.
"Someday this war is Gona end" Col Killgore
The bungling incompetence is by design...then comes the NWO
True, these wizards are not going to do anything that would hurt their job security like actually being good enough at their jobs to make a substantial difference.
hey don't forget they were caught off-guard (not) by 9-11 and the place had already been bombed not five years earlier.
none of what they say is real. the zionists want israel's natural enemies to all be failed states in civil war so they can't gang up on israel. everything else is bunk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsoY3AIRUGA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW6mJOqRDI4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhROd7Jt3-w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgM6hjNedE0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj_AL4OlmHc&feature=iv&src_vid=rnbMjAN7B...
http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticl...
It was partly a bungling bureaucracy and lots of Yes-men that led to the downfall of the NAZI war machine
It ain't pretty .... the only positive spin I can think of .... in the flying fuck at a rolling doughnut category .... is the grief and turmoil we've inflicted .... is a grinding pay back for 9/11 .... made to look not mean .... but bumbling and misguided .... if that's the psy-ops strategy .... I'm OK with it .... I want Islam to bleed to death .... or reform itself ?
That's not a strategy.
sure it's a strategy. it's just not payback for 9-11. it's what 9-11 allows the u.s. government to do until more people see through the ruse.
Speaking of donuts
http://www.collive.com/show_news.rtx?id=12031
which one is you in those pics monetas .....
A good friend, who worked at the Pentagon in Intelligence for 15 years, told me his favorite oxymoron was "Military Intelligence". That should tell you something.
Excellent article. Now add the CIA, DHS and NSA and yet - YET - we still had 9/11. They're so full of fucking bullshit it's unbelievable.
that second "yet" in all caps says something very valuable if but seen.
911 was a false flag, very obvious if you bother to actually look at the evidence and the people presenting that evidence.
https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/166/
We're constantly caught off guard because we think that something that hasn't worked for better than 50 years, namely regime change, will work this time.
In MENA, see:
Iran
Iraq
Libya
Syria (they hope)
Yemen
And we've expanded our horizons, as well:
See:
Cuba
Ukraine
Venezuela
Bolivia
We get rid of democratically elected governments we don't like and replace them either with tyrants or, as we've done lately, replaced them with nothing but chaos.
We do these things then try to explain why the people in these countries hate us. Hint, it AIN'T for our freedoms.
now we didn't actually get rid of anyone in cuba, unless it was batista (no, he was the mafia's and the cia's guy, the true regime change here was the jfk assassination) and saddam and qaddafi weren't ever really elected. but your point is well taken and could also include:
chile (allende - murdered by nixon and kissinger upon his election in '73)
vietnam (diem - murdered by kennedy in '63)
i'm getting tired typing, see below for the many more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change...
but what about
In order to match it, I suppose we have to go back to 2200 BC when Nimrod built the Tower of Babel.
better off hiring ZH and commenters
Gordon Duff did a similar, and shorter story like this about a year or so ago ..... There are so many conflicting agencies, so much money being thrown a "intelligence" … it's all Totally fucked up
Wow, 1500 different assholes, oops, I meant opinions, on what the next move is...then, the 20 or so joint chiefs of staff, 20 more assholes, sorry, opinions on what we should do next...then, we have one Overlord of Assholiness, Obamymammy, whose option is "just drone em baby."
We are sooooooo fucking screwed...FUBAR
The details just seem silly at this point, I'd be more worried about the analysts that are targeting us, nobody wants to touch that one. It's going feudal Bitchez.
Bring out your dead!
To make a long story even longer, they were watching porn all day and no, they weren't occupied with attacking ISIS at all because they are U.S. allies. In fact they were supplying them. Why act so surprised? Bin livin under a rock? And again ask yourselve, how did they get all those Toyota's not to mention the Hummies?
this fog is electronically induced.
Intelligence is a tough business. On the raw end is too much input, making it difficult to nearly impossible to sort out the relevant, accurate, verifiable data from all the trash in time to assess, act and positively influence ongoing events. On the other end are politics, which kick in at the senior military and agency levels and begin to influence content in the inevitable "summaries" that comprise (and compromise) the upward flow of "information". By the time a complex situation has been reduced to a news release or an administration talking point, what little integrity might have existed at the analyst-report level is long gone.
Can this be fixed? Sure, but not by bumbling politicians and political appointees. It is fundamentally a resource and information management problem on a massive scale that must be solved in spite of an entrenched bureaucracy and all those top-level doofi. The most critical missing ingredient is competent management at all levels with the authority and desire to actually fix something that isn't working. Even then the best intelligent product imaginable would still be required to survive the cover-your-ass political gauntlet.
Given the failure rate of plans in all of recorded history, there is something wrong with your analysis.
https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/important-things-are-not-f...
That's hilarious, America, caught off guard in the Middle East, how about America, caught off Guard in America... Country sold out to big money, it's corrupt and going down the sewer of sorrows.
Your short post carries more information than the entire, lengthy article.
Same situation happened in 1945
And Satan America learned to cross all limits of decency & used nuclear bombs
Same will happen now in middle east
Doesn't seem to mention Oded Yinnon? All a "intelligence analyst has to do is read up on that guy, who for example, started back in 1996 writing about the need to use Turkey, Jordan, and tribes to destabalize Syria, for the benefit of Greater Israel. His plan was spruced up to become the PNAC and it was all going great until 30-9-2015.
My own suspicion: you could get rid of most of the 17 agencies and outfits in the U.S. Intelligence Community and dump just about all the secret and classified information that is the heart and soul of the national security state.
This is true. But then again, the MIC isn't interested in actual defense. It's interest is creating sustainable warfare. No clear victories, keep the wars moving along smoothly. Job security.
One. Massive. Scam.
Of those 1500 analysts, I bet a half-dozen speak Farsi.
But most have 2 or three passports!
But most have 2 or three passports!
nobody cares anymore. they just show up and run the little daily bullshit over and over. there is no payoff for doing anything. you get treated like shit at every turn so why try just phone in the minimum and let the future take care of it self.
Caught off guard? No surprising, for a country only interested in Micky Mouse and Donald Fuck.
Off guard? Horse crap. The powers taht be want it exactly this way: eternal warfare. The masses didn't all run screaming when they created the new fake enemy, ISIS, (ooohhh, much WORSE than Al Qaeda, we're told), so they had to cook something up to get people scared and running in circles.
This is exactly right: they want eternal FUNDING of the war mah-cheen.
http://sputniknews.com/politics/20151014/1028536556/us-russia-syrian-str...
Somtimes the simpliest answer is ignored. The military is not surprised with what is happening, senior officers in current positions asgree with this administration and choose to ignore whats going on. This administration fired, relieved. or set up senior officers that disagreed with current strategy.
The current military is nothing more then a social experiment especially with this president. The war is being fought by politicians not military people, period. Disagree and your out. Disagree with what the president is trying to do by allowing women in combat units, openly gay, and now transgender in units and your out. Fuck trying to actually win a war. Redd Green your correct they are prolonging the conflict on purpose to display their latest and greatest military toys.
Downvote me all you like but having been in combat in two wars women have no place in combat units. Treaties are signed with all nations called the SOFA agreement or Status of Forces Agreement. Being openly gay in the military mean your nondeployable to most countries of the world. I know many came out of the closet and could not deploy. The recent media hoopla about two women graduating from ranger school did not report on how these two women were dragged and the standards lowered so they could indeed graduate. Yes the men dragged them carryied them and were told to make this happen or they would pay the price. Of course never reported. It is good to have friend that tell it like it is from there.
I absolutely hate war and most here do as well. But do not think for a minute they were surprised. They remain silent because this administration and the senior officers will destroy you if you open your mouth. Any person looking at the strategy knows it was doomed to fail. Anyone can see it. Real estate is not held by drones, aircraft, intell, or the Navy. It is held by infantry, armor, field artillery and combat engineers. None of which is deployed in the region. The war is being fought by the White House and we wonder why we are fucked.
Complete rubbish. The MIC has been making money hand over fist since WWII and has no intention of ever getting off that gravy train.
Any monopoloy organization (the military, government agency, transit authority, whatever) is inherently incestuous. It is not so much the selection at the gate as the fact that new blood will either adapt to the existing company culture or will be rejected or depart. The inbreeding of the company culture is intense.
Americans being American, they favor technological solutions over anything else. For decades they have been expanding their capabilities to collect data but have been complaining about their lack of "human assets."
Compounding this is the fact that any fact-finding mission is compromised at the start by ideologically false narratives which the hierarchy foists on all levels of endeavour down through the chain of command. The false (ideological) narratives have only become more acute with the advent of the "main stream" media. The very term already indicates that there is consensus monopoly and a lack of critical, investigative, and especially differentiated journalism advancing competing narratives.
More data quantity will yield nothing if one is not marshalling the significant facts, and even then, one needs to evaluate competing hypotheses and theories about how other cultures and sub-cultures think and develop, in other words, interpret the meaning of what the hell is going on. But interpretation and meaning are qualitative aspects which are difficult to organize; moreover, there is a mutually reflexive flow between data and interpretation. Facts influence your theory but your theory determines what kind of data you want to collect.
Intelligence means nothing if it is not intelligent: that is why nerds are frequently so useless. All the data in the world means nothing if you think that shooting wrong-headed shepherds in the desert will lead to political goals. The track record of the "intelligence community" clearly shows it is time to start from scratch: the same need for a reset applies to the political function and the fifth estate of the US.