What's Wrong With Current Intelligence?

During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, excellent intelligence existed. Spy plane overflights clearly photographed missile silo construction in San Crystalbal, Cuba. During the Cold War, excellent intelligence existed on both the Soviet Union and highly secretive China and their military capabilities. So why is current intelligence on terrorism and Iraq nearly a theatre of the absurd by comparison?

Much of the "intelligence" that provided the gist for Bush's war in Iraq came from Ahmed Chalabi, who runs a private militia in Iraq. Chalabi was paid as much as $330,000 a month to an organization that he and and his brother operated by the CIA for "intelligence information, despite the fact that Chalabi had been convicted in Jordan in the nation's worst bank fraud scandal, and is a fugitive from justice. Now Chalabi is under U.S. investigation for also selling information to Iran as well. Thequestion is did Chalabi simply invent information simply to cash in from the U.S., or did he deliberately falsify information so that theU.S. would act and help to put him into power? Regardless, his claims of Iraqi WMDs under Saddam Hussein proved outrightly false and unreliable compared to even 1962 standards that accurately had details correct of Cuban construction of missile silos that were carefully disgused by dummy houses to conceal these deadly silos only 90 miles from the U.S. shores.

Beside the "intelligence" testimony of Chalabi that has been proven to be outrightly false, two more absurd intelligence information bits came out this week that further question the current intelligence ability under the Bush Administration.

This week any connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda was dealt a serious blow when the New York Times ran a feature that claimed this information was solely based on a prisoner who was tortured and abused by Egyptian guards, and made up this information to stop his abuse. It proves that torture of terrorists does not work. They simply make information up to stop the pain or bad treatment. This is hardly a sound information gathering technique.

And in an absolutely absurd second embarrassment to the current state that the intelligence community has sunk to under the Bush Administration, this week intelligence sources have decided not to list a miniture golf course, Golfland in San Jose California, as a terrorist target. Other than few small structures such as a windmill that a golfer must hit the ball between the blades turning, Golfland really has no draw. It is a low capacity business, that hardly draws major numbers of persons such as stadiums or other large capacity locations. Maybe the Bush Administration believes some plan to hijack a radio controlled plane exists and to crash it into the windmill at Golfland and cause also a $1.50 in damage exists. But to any rational person, it seems absurd intelligence information to consider Golfland to be any terrorist target.

The Bush Administration wants the American public to believe that they can best defend the public from terrorism. Yet compared to even 1962 standards that were dead on accurate during the Cuban Missile Crisis, today's intelligence despite high tech electronic advances, new techniques and highly advanced satellites that can read a license plate number from outer space seem to be so far from accurate during the Bush Administration. The safety and security of every American citizen is at stake, and a serious debate on why this intelligence is continually worsening under the Bush Administration deserves a careful review.