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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend....
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To: Sully- who wrote (9738)5/10/2005 8:05:39 PM
From: Sully-   of 35834
 
THE TWO HALVES OF INTEL

By Mowbray on Uncategorized

The Washington Post tangentially touches upon a key issue: what exactly was Bolton doing that rankled folks at State and CIA?

Was he “bullying” or “pushing” intel to say something that wasn’t there? No.

Intelligence has two basic components:

1) data points, and

2) analysis of how to interpret the data points.

“Data points” covers a wide array, from phone intercepts and satellite images to human sources to open-source material appearing in the foreign press. The key is what to make of the information. State and CIA analysts are hardly divined by the Almighty with some special ability to read minds and guage intent.

Bolton has had more first-hand experience and knowledge of various world players than probably any two or three “analysts” with whom he so vigorously disagreed. No one is accusing of Bolton creating data points. His much-maligned Cuba speech, for example, came entirely from lines written by others in the U.S. government. Ditto for what he said on North Korea and Syria. The knock against him from some in the intel community, then, is merely that he painted an overall too-dire picture.

But what’s the track record for intel “analysts’? Not good.

Not meant as a cheap shot, but 9/11 caught them by surprise. State even had a policy of tilted neutrality toward the Taliban. Why should we now accept their interpretations of possible threats unquestioningly? Better yet, given the state of the world, isn’t it better to err on the side of caution and not implicitly trust tyrants?

confirmbolton.com

washingtonpost.com
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