7thriv

This essay by George Friedman at Stratfor crystalizes what I think of the Renault-esque "torture" debate we are having: Torture_and_u_s_intelligence_failure

The endless argument over torture, the posturing of both critics and
defenders, misses the crucial point. The United States turned to torture because it has experienced a massive intelligence failure reaching back a decade. The U.S. intelligence community simply failed to gather sufficient information on al Qaeda’s intentions, capability, organization and personnel. The use of torture was not part of a competent intelligence effort, but a response to a massive intelligence failure.

That failure was rooted in a range of miscalculations over time. There was the public belief that the end of the Cold War meant the United States didn’t need a major intelligence effort, a point made by the late Sen. Daniel Moynihan. There were the intelligence people who regarded Afghanistan as old news. There was the Torricelli amendment that made recruiting people with ties to terrorist groups illegal without special approval. There were the Middle East experts who could not understand that al Qaeda was fundamentally different from anything seen before. The list of the guilty is endless, and ultimately includes the American people, who always seem to believe that the view of the world as a dangerous place is something made up by contractors and bureaucrats.

Our sprawling intelligence services are one of the many American institutions that have simply ceased to function properly. This is not just because of funding cuts or a liberal approach to law enforcement and war that instinctively wants to hamstring US power. It is also because of the services themselves, which cultivated an air of omniscence, even as they hunkered down in the DC suburbs and issued intelligence reports that were easily contradicted by commonly available sources, and even common sense. After completely missing 9/11 and declaring WMD's in Iraq to be a "slam dunk," we are now told (as of the last NIE) that Iran is not developing nukes. Does anyone outside of the CIA and the State Department believe this? Surely, the exemplar for the "modern" CIA is Valerie Plame, a middle-class suburban matron whose "spy" career was largely spent driving through the front gates of CIA headquarters every morning, where she helped lead the disastrous WMD team.

CIA apologists have fretted that Obama's release of the torture memo will cause "good people" to leave the CIA. The good people left long ago. I would love it if the deadwood resigned en masse over this suposed betrayal, but they won't. Like UAW members clinging to their over-priced union jobs in dying car maunfacturers, today's CIA employee is a comfortable bureaucratic lifer whiling out his days in Northern Virginia, producing (and leaking) reports with little bearing in reality. The illusions that they create are a far greater danger than the threats we face, as we focus on the CIA's fantasies, rather than harsh reality.