On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 19:19:30 -0600 "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes:
> Incidents, hundreds of incidents, do not establish agency
> incompetence.
> Intelligence is historically an operation which by comparison with
> "legitimate" enterprises is incompetent. It has always been that
> way. The
> secrecy, undesirability of the job, the vagueness of its goals have
> always
> created such fiascos. It's simply part of the price of "doing
> business" of
> that sort, not evidence of incompetence.
I think that the proper standard for comparison would be against the successes and failures of other countries' intelligence agencies. The Israeli Mossad, for instance, has been much ballyhooed over the years for its legendary successes, but in recent years, some of its former agents have begun writing about that agency's failures (some of which have been quite spectacular as well). And the same can be said for other foreign intelligence agencies like the former Soviet Union's KGB. I think that Carrol is right, that given the clandestine nature of the work that such agencies perform, snafus and spectacular failures are pretty much unavoidable, so the question is whether the occasional successes that such agencies experience, return enough value to justify the costs incurred by their (perhaps more frequent) failures.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math
>
> You simply have to make a radical shift of perspective, of standards
> of
> competence, in order to judge the competence of the CIA _as an
> intelligence
> agency._ I see nothing in this to indicate its organizational
> incompetence.
>
> Can't leftists get over the bad habit or longing to have their
> enemies
> stupid? It's not good politics.
>
> Carrol
>
>
____________________________________________________________
Kill Your Wrinkles
Mom Reveals Shocking $5 method for erasing wrinkles...Doctors hate her
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4d6136006b7db38df9fst06vuc