EMPTY INTELLIGENCE

As with many Americans, I've listened to the radio reports and watched the television reports churned out in regard to the Delta plane bomber and the suicide bombing that killed the seven C.I.A. agents. In these matters President Obama has gotten directly involved. High councils have been summoned to deliberate on these matters. Analyses have been offered privately (assertion based on probability) and publicly.

Comes now the President of the U.S.A., Barack Obama, to say in effect: "There was a failure of intelligence in our intelligence agencies and no one was to blame." Undoubtedly, the information had been gathered by our "crack" intelligence people, along with data that was gathered by our allies, which in sum contained the required information necessary and sufficient to neutralize the two terror events prior to their execution. The American public was advised that for unknown reasons the accumulated data had not engendered a well-formed view that a terror event was rapidly gathering into perilous form, and, hence, preventive steps ought to be taken.


As these individuals were - and are - well-paid government employees whose only known function is to study intelligence data with an idea of understanding potential dangers to America from its enemies, as well as potential threats to our allies, friends and others, and to bring this danger to the attention of suitable executive branch authorities, then how was it possible that no one was at fault? Individuals employed by government to protect America failed America. Was President Obama issuing a sort of "executive pardon?" Is this another case of American society being guilty, rather than a gaggle of intelligence personnel in possession of the intelligence data which revealed the potential threat and which gave cause for security warnings on these issues to be passed promptly to the executive branch?


The President explained that our intelligence people failed to "connect the dots." Are we children? Why did President Obama insult us by stating our "intelligence" agencies failed to connect the dots? "Intelligence" is not the appropriate label to employ regarding these people. They are mere bureaucrats more interested in the machinations of Dan Snyder and the Redskins football team than in facing the masses of raw intelligence data gathered continually and understanding what their import might be for our America.


Maybe our "intelligence agencies" have outgrown America. Perhaps they perceive that there are larger issues with which the "world community" must come to grips.


One cannot help wondering, if this is true, does it also apply to the President?






January 11, 2010