[...]
>I read one of his CIA papers on the politicalization of intelligence,
>from 1992 when Gates was the Director of CIA. It addresses analysts and
>managers. The point was that developing a truthful narrative is
>critical for accurate intelligence. That goal is impossible if
>political considerations control the narrative. This was quite a
>read. Gates is an ideologue, so he has become a spin master
>on his own view of the world. This makes it impossible for him to make
>a cold empirical view. He thinks GWOT is a patriotic duty. What
>that means is he can't give a narrative truth when he sees one and
>can't accept a narrative truth if he is told one.
That's the problem. The US intelligence bureaucracy is suffering from the same cancer that Perelman just talked about re the economics. As he put it, you start out with the answer you want and work back. The intelligence bureaucracy in the US has been doing that for years, its one of the reasons the US couldn't win the Vietnam war.
And it isn't just intelligence gathering and economics that are infected with this cancer, the whole business management/accounting sector is riddled with the same malignant tumors. Same story, the accountants first start with the profit they want to make and then twist the balance sheet to justify it.
Not that this cancer is confined to the US, but its worse in the US simply because the US is such a large business and economic entity, less subject to the corrective forces of reality.
Smaller, more vulnerable states couldn't survive so long if their military and economic leaders were so systematically divorced from reality. Their economy would collapse and no-one would care, the very state would collapse (or be crushed from outside) and disappear into the dustbin of history.
Large empires, military or economic, take much longer to die. And of course when their military and economic leaders are living in the clouds, no-one can even see it coming.
Classic example, the Presidency of GW Bush. The most bungling, incompetent, useless and dangerous head of state imaginable. Many smaller states would not have survived the crass stupidity of having such a deluded moron as head of state for 8 years. Though more likely, if the people had been so stupid as to elect such a creature, there would have been a coup, as more sensible types raced to rescue their state from impending doom.
Of course it is also much less likely that the citizens of a smaller state would have been so careless as to have elected a loose cannon like Bush. Even if they happened to lean towards his way of thinking, they would have recognised the potential risks and shied away from putting themselves in peril. Only in the US would people be so reckless, simply because they believe themselves invulnerable to any danger from the real world.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas