These past few weeks have seen an avalanche of annoying second guessers, awkward mea culpas and an insidious slow-bleed of embarrassing information on bureaucratic missteps preceding AQAP's failed operation against Flight 253. If you google "intelligence failure" at google news you can see how this is playing out in the American media. Not pretty.
The poor folks at Waq-al-Waq have been paddling upstream against a current of idiocies. They deserve a round of applause.
My favorite report of the Flight 253 cycle comes via FoxNews. Is it accurate? I have no idea. Is it plausible? Oh, hell, yes!
In the end, it was the usual bureaucratic nonsense that happen here, not a failure of "proper analysis" (whatever that is).
Lost in the cacophony of Flight 253 hysterics, was a recent Playboy article that explores another massive intelligence failure, albeit a woefully under-covered intelligence failure. Back in December 2003 the entire IC was jacked up on a perplexing threat. I can remember various high-level meetings and briefings, and a general sense of doom around the office. Well, Playboy Magazine, has an article on the massive intelligence failure that precipitated that moronic slip into hysterics. Warning: it is a Playboy article and probably won't make it past employer internet filters. Open it at home.
For a good laugh, read the last sentence.
No! You don't say!
This DHS response is rather lame...But we can always track 2010's terrorist events with our very own Counterterrorism daily planner.
In the end, our radicals will continue to whine about counterterrorism policies and efforts, regardless of who is president and how many speeches they make...
Like this: http://umarlee.com/2010/01/04/thoughts-on-the-underwear-bomber-and-the-aftermath/
Or this low-key but surprisingly unseemly post about assassinating President Obamahttp://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2010/01/obama-disappoints-again.html
In a related, if under-reported, story: the December publication of a stinging report on the state of our intel capabilities in Afghanistan by Major General Flynn, et al, has caused a bit of a fuss in the blogoshere.
Defense strategy is not my game, but can I make a suggestion? The floundering Afghan strategy may also be a symptom of another failure. If I'm not mistaken, preparing for two simultaneous wars was a strategic imperative of 90s-era Pentagon policy. Well, 2001-present has seen just such a situation, but we've been woefully unable to balance the two. What happened to the two-war strategy?
