The word intelligence has two meanings. First, it refers to
the ability of an organism to understand and make use of the information it has
obtained. For example, a six year old child that can read is more intelligent
than when he was three years old and could not read. Second, the word
intelligence refers to the act of gathering information legitimately about a
situation, or illegitimately like when a jurisdiction spies on another
jurisdiction.
What comes out when looking into the matter of spying is
that the two meanings of the word commingle so closely, they almost mean one
and the same thing. That is, to gather information about an opponent and to
correctly interpret it cannot be done without having an advanced ability to
understand, and to make use of that information. Thus, it can be said that a
high level of intelligence is a predicate to having good intelligence.
This is shown by looking into the article that was written
by Tom Rogan under the title: “Intelligence and the Islamic State,” and the
subtitle: “America 's
neglect of 'perishable commodities,'” published on October 16, 2014 in National
Review Online. His main point is this: “President Obama's strategy is
collapsing. His intelligence failings explain why.” The problem is that the
author does not tell what Obama's strategy is. He seems to say, however, that
the Islamic State has not as yet been defeated; therefore, the strategy
(whatever it is) is collapsing. And he attributes the collapse to the failings
of intelligence without showing how a better intelligence could have saved the
day.
This done (or left undone,) he goes on to parrot what
knowledgeable and experienced intelligence people have been saying publicly for
some time now. It is that technology such as satellites and telephone
intercepts are a good thing to have, but without human eyes to see, human ears
to hear and human brains to interpret, intelligence remains incomplete,
therefore, lamentably inadequate.
But why is America
lacking in these areas? Well, he does not blame it on lack of funds – in fact,
he speaks of “the NSA's vast mainframes.” Instead (for what it's worth) here is
how he put it: “the U.S. – hamstrung by force-protection concerns and
bureaucratic hesitancy – has few intelligence officers on the ground
identifying, recruiting, and directing agents against the Islamic State,”
whatever that means. But he goes on to explain: “Thinking assets of native
face, tongue, and cultural understanding, human sources can infect the enemy's
beating heart. These ears and eyes are the crown Jewels of intelligence work.”
If this is the problem, does it have a solution? Yes, he
says. And he explains: “Today, the (admittedly superb) Jordanian intelligence
service leads this human-intelligence effort. But they desperately need more
ground-level support.” And he stops here without telling how America could help in this regard,
and get the intelligence it so desperately needs.
Still, it is a good thing he stopped here because saying
anything more along this line would have been the equivalent of shooting
himself in the mouth. But he did say something about “force-protection concerns
and bureaucratic hesitancy.” And he now seems to say that the Jordanians can
fill the role of Iraqi and Syrian “thinking assets of native face, tongue and
cultural understanding...” Gosh! How stupid can someone get? This is like
jumping out of the frying pan and dropping into the next frying pan.
The truth is that thanks to people like Dennis Ross, the
State Department and other agencies were cleared not only of their Arab
speaking Americans but also their blue-blooded, all-American American
“Arabists.” The fact is that there are 22 Arab countries where hundreds of
dialects and colloquials are spoken. America 's
Jews bribed or blackmailed enough vulnerable politicians, and got them to work
on the bureaucracy, forcing it to hire Jews instead of Arabs to interpret the
Arab World to America .
But even the Jews who lived in an Arab country and could speak Arabic did a
lousy job interpreting … if not because of incompetence, because they
deliberately acted to distort reality to advance the interests of Israel . It was
treason … downright criminal treason because America ended up paying with the
wealth of its people and the lives of its children.