Shane Harris & Tim Mak, Daily Beast: Exclusive: This Is the ISIS Intel the U.S. Military Dumbed Down
The intelligence pros said killing certain ISIS leaders might not diminish the group and that airstrikes might not be working. The bosses didn’t like those answers—not at all.
Senior intelligence officials at the U.S. military’s Central Command demanded significant alterations to analysts’ reports that questioned whether airstrikes against the so-called Islamic State widely known as ISIS were damaging the group’s finances and its ability to launch attacks. But reports that showed the group being weakened by the U.S.-led air campaign received comparatively little scrutiny, The Daily Beast has learned.
Senior CENTCOM intelligence officials who reviewed the critical reports sent them back to the analysts and ordered them to write new versions that included more footnotes and details to support their assessments, according to two officials familiar with a complaint levied by more than 50 analysts about intelligence manipulation by CENTCOM higher-ups.
WNU Editor: I suspect that this is just the tip of the iceberg ... and what is troubling about all of this is that future intelligence reports from CENTCOM are now probably going to be suspect for a very long time. But how the White House is responding to all of this .... including the White House saying the President Obama was always sceptical of all of this and it is not his fault .... White House Refuses To Take Responsibility For A Failed Syrian Policy .... that is unprecedented and something that I have never heard a sitting President say when it comes to his own sanctioned intelligence/military operation.
1 comment:
After the 911 attacks and after the intelligence mistakes that occurred in Iraq I had suggested we needed to completely dismantle our intelligence agencies and start from scratch. We could have relied on allies such as Israel, The UK, France, and Germany to help us build world class intelligence services. While this was being done, we could have relied on their intelligence services.
Had this course been pursued allot of bad things that have happened over the years since then maybe could have been avoided. Maybe other bad things might have happened as it is hard to speculate on a policy that was not implemented.
Had I been POTUS I would have recognized in the early 2000s that US intelligence is unreliable and should not be trusted. At a minimum, anything they come up with will need to be verified by other sources. There are a number of blogs such as this one along with a variety of news sources who are far more reliable than US intelligence services are.
Many people were vilified over what happened with Iraq. Not wanting this to happen again may be influencing intel personnel so that the reports they now present are to rosy.
We face existential threats on multiple fronts and we don't have reliable intelligence. God help us all.
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