The guys from Langley have been conspicuously absent without leave during this whole Middle East collapse business. Who is minding the intelligence gathering in these places? Where is the Hum-Int which should be telling us about these things before they occur? Where is the analysis that explains who the motivators are and where the leadership is based? Who is offering predictions on outcomes and power shifts?
For all we see, the Egypt blow-up was unpredicted. Tunisia came out of nowhere. Bahrain? Seriously? Wasn't Bahrain a bastion of pro-democracy, free-market capitalism in the region? How did Assad's control of Syria crumble over night? If Yemen, why not Somalia? Dubai? Qatar?
We keep hearing about "freedom fighters" and demands for "democracy" and an "Arab Spring" but the parallel to what went in in Europe as the Eastern bloc collapsed is hardly more than a seasonal coincidence. There is no cultural parallel that lets us predict a conversion to Western political or economic values. The people pushing and shouting in the streets are definitely not European.
Is it simply an aberration that this all boiled over at once? There is no such thing as coincidence in matters of this magnitude. Where is the puppet-master? Who is sending out the action messages? Have we any idea what is developing across this very significant chunk of the globe?
CIA, does anybody over there have a clue?
2 comments:
Somehow I get the idea our Intelligence Agencies have pretty much turned HUMINT tasking over to our European allies while we prefer to just prioritize SIGINT and ELINT...which is somewhat problematic if the nation you are monitoring has no SIG or EL from which to gather INT...works great against highly industrialized nations...third world nations...not so much.
Two things:
- The 'old boy' network of Ivy League elitists has been infesting the management of the CIA since it was the OSS. Guess what they learned in 'collidge'?
- If the FBI can't find it in themselves to arrest their boss (Holder) for his crimes (people of color being the only possible victims of 'hate crime'; trying to defeat military tribunals for 09/11 terrorists; ignoring, rather than filing appeals for laws declared unconstitutionally null and void; and refusing to even investigate DOI countermanding the courts over blanket Gulf Coast drilling bans) - how can we expect the poor field schlubs in the CIA to file urgent reports and requests which will be ignored?
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