Richard Norton Taylor is a veteran intelligence reporter for The Guardianwho has spent decades reporting on MI6, the British intelligence service. and he’s got plenty of good stories to show for it. Here’s one. An MI6 officer had told him, he says, that the reason why some MI6 people were against the invasion of Iraq...
Tag: intelligence
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Afghanistan Is Only the Latest US War to Be Driven by Deceit and Delusion
From military analyst Gordon Adams: An initial mission intended to remove the Taliban and close the al-Qaida training camps succeeded, though Osama bin Laden slipped away for another 10 years. But hubris kept the U.S. from stopping there.The mission expanded: create a modern democracy, a modern society and, above all, a modern military in...
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Why We Lost in Afghanistan
Via CounterPunch.org, a veteran Washington military analyst Winslow Wheeler breaks it down. The Afghan government’s war effort was riddled with corruption at every level of the society, but mostly at the top. It was fueled by American plane loads of cash and bottomless economic handouts (with too little oversight too late — very informing but...
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Directors of CIA and Mossad Meet in Israel
So far we have mostly wire service coverage. The situation: The United States is seeking to restart nuclear negotiations with Iran, while Israel seeks to disrupt those talks. Israeli press offers unsubstantiated rumor while Iran reminds the United States it has escalatory powers with a barrage of Hezbollah rockets and Persian Gulf drone attack. Bill...
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Spy Talk: 5 Ways to Read an Intelligence Report
From the reliable SpyTalk, retired CIA official Ronald Marks has some commonsense advice for those trying to understand the intelligence process. First of all, do remember it is analysis, not crystal ball gazing. Never in my long history with the CIA has there been one perfect piece of information that tells the whole story. The...