Intelligence reports

It is interesting to note that the famous “Team B” – a group of hardliners selected by the CIA in the 70s to produce a report in which they claimed that the Soviet threat had been terribly underestimated and there were all sorts of military “gaps” and “windows of vulnerability” – was set up by Richard Perle and included Paul Wolfowitz. It’s a living, I suppose.

One imagines that a vital step in assessing a potential threat is to produce best case and worst case assessments based on the information available. The gap between the two would then graphically show the depth of actual knowledge about the situation and therefore indicate the areas that need to be examined more fully.

Trouble is, even if this is done with intellectual rigour, if the knowledge gap is large the worst case looks so bad that it can be picked up and waved about dramatically to serve a politico’s own ambitions, thereby dangerously short-circuiting the entire process.

If anyone has the time, it would be worth studying if overstating the enemy has some significant benefit to the US economy.

_significant benefit to the US economy_ – I would expect evidence to be of the sort:
1. More efficient use of existing resources of labour and capital,
2. Greater control, influence of external resources, either through transfer of ownership, or support contracts

If anyone has the time, it would be worth studying if overstating the enemy has some significant benefit to the US economy.

Here’s some Chomsky for you:

“By the late 1940s, it was taken for granted in government-corporate circles that the state would have to intervene massively to maintain the private economy. In 1948, with postwar pent-up consumer demand exhausted and the economy sinking back into recession, Truman’s “cold-war spending” was regarded by the business press as a “magic formula for almost endless good times” (Steel), a way to “maintain a generally upward tone” (Business Week). The Magazine of Wall Street saw military spending as a way to “inject new strength into the entire economy,” and a few years later, found it “obvious that foreign economies as well as our own are now mainly dependent on the scope of continued arms spending in this country,” referring to the international military Keynesianism that finally succeeded in reconstructing state capitalist industrial societies abroad and laying the basis for the huge expansion of Transnational Corporations (TNCs), at that time mainly U.S.-based.

The Pentagon system was considered ideal for these purposes. It imposes on the public a large burden of the costs (research and development, R&D) and provides a guaranteed market for excess production, a useful cushion for management decisions.”

Even if true, why would privatization be the worst thing? If the sale was conducted properly, the new state would raise a huge amount of cash. Max, you seem to be assuming that it would be given away for free.

Why restrict the focus to just the American arms industry?

“As Europe’s biggest arms fair opens in London, BBC News Online takes a look at the importance of the UK defence industry. With annual sales of about £17bn, the industry likes to see itself as a key plank of the UK economy.

“The industry’s biggest customer is the British government, which last year placed orders worth about £13bn.

“But the UK is also the world’s second biggest arms exporter, behind the United States, with a market share of about 20%.” – from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3084718.stm

Britain’s arms industry is doing very well nicely, thank you, selling arms to the world under Tony Blair’s charismatic leadership. It wasn’t ranked anywhere near as well against the fierce international competition under the Tories. I suppose we have to put it down to New Labour’s ethical foreign policy. Whatever became of that?

Of course, the race to sell arms to the Middle East started some way back and well before the Iraq war started. When Tony Blair was asked about doubling British arms exports to Israel, he was reported as saying: “you could cut the British arms industry, but someone else would supply them.” – from: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4468406-110779,00.html

I seem to remember much the same being said by the defendant at his trial for supplying crack cocaine but that is bound to be just another of those untimely coincidences.

Of course the most fascinating thing about that kind of “at the time we didn’t know that” statement is that it doesn’t absolve anyone, because it does not provide an explanation for why that knowledge was so lacking.

I’m always in awe at how we’re supposed to be trusting intelligence all the time, except when to defend a certain policy post-facto it’s argued the intelligence was incomplete or incompetent or flawed, but without saying why. We’re supposed to believe intelligence simply overestimated the threat like that, for no reason at all, other than _naivete_ and maybe, inexperience. Like it was 12 year olds playing strategy games. And if you don’t buy that, and ask a question or two, you’re a “conspiracy theorist”. So the only choices you have are to be dumb, or crazy.

I don’t know if we are supposed to take the idea “at the time we didn’t know that” seriously. If we were, we might replace the leaders with some competant ones.

There are lots of experts and informers around, so information is not so hard to gather.

“Team B” was not a group of people selected by the CIA, it was selected by George Bush in 1976 to contradict the mainstream CIA, which was claiming that the Soviet Union was relatively weak and poor. Certain elements of the Goldwater wing of the Republican party believed (or wanted to believe) that the Soviet Union was a much bigger threat than it was. “Team B” drastically overestimated the Soviet Union. The CIA was much closer to the mark. Some people – not just Chomsky – have noted the links between regressive poltics, defense contractors, and the people who formed “Team B” and think we shouldn’t be surprised that their conclusions led to paranoia, a reactionary change in American government and increased defense spending.

And when exactly did the Soviet Union try to take over in the Middle East? In what deluded Reaganite fantasy was the USSR at all close to Khomeni’s Iran? “Left-wing elements”? Yes, there were left wing elements to the Iranian revolution. There was a lot of disgust at Shah’s rather plutocratic government. But Khomeni was a theocrat. That’s pretty far from the Soviet Union. The Iranisn revolution, and the Baluch independence movement has about as much to do with the USSR as Malcolm X did.

Well no-one is really criticizing the overestimation itself – so it sounds like everyone is happy with it.

So when the next Cry-Wolf comes along – China, for example – do we mind the trillion dollar arms boost to oppose the Chinese. No, maybe not. We just ask for a high paid defence contract.

The only downfall in this strategy I can see is perhaps less focus on social issue, and potentially keeping the focus in the wrong place. For example, while we build up against 1 “wolf”, another nukes Miami.

Didn’t David Horowitz have a graph showing the connections between them and Michael Moore and Al-Zarqawi and John Kerry?

Ok Mitch,

Since no one else will play. I have looked at your assertions and have tried to determine where the information that you presented was sourced. I cannot determine if they are credible, but they mention some of your listed items, indicating that Iraq was responsible for all of the terrorist attacks perpetrated on the US. Even some that have not been confirmed as fact (TWA 800). What is your point? That invading Iraq was justifiable?

Just because groups of people happen to be from or visited Iraq seems to mean that Saddam H. was so efficient and sneaky that he was able to pull all of the attacks in some coordinated effort. Get a clue. The Muslims hate us because we are hypocrites; we talk democracy but would no risk the flow of oil to get it done. Mr. McVeigh was privy to this hypocrisy during the first Gulf War and used it as part of his rationalization for the OK City bombing.

The more likely scenario is that the boys (UK & US) in charge determined that 911 was a perfect opportunity to get a foothold in the Middle East, before the nuclear option became available to a Muslim country. They are fighting a war in a proxy country and are in a position to take advantage of any destabilization of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Besides, with the Chinese and the Indians ramping up Industrialization, they are going to need resources as well. Don’t you think it is very wise to have the British and the US at the spigot now, instead of worrying how much oil China or India would dole out the West?

Wake up Mitch, the white nations always win and they win because they convince people like you that brownie would kill them given the opportunity, so killing them first is justifiable.

“It is very difficult to convince a man of a fact when his income depends on his not understanding that fact” – GB Shaw (I think)

The CIA, the military and the pollies that funded them all depended for their income on the existence of a strong Soviet threat. So of course they all sincerely believed in it, and all believed it their duty to keep the population in fear of that threat.

A bit like the war on terrorism actually.

Mitch – Speculation of whether it is this enemy or that is fascinating and worthy of many books, but it is like a farmer complaining about which of the animals are getting restless (Orwell’s 1984).

As Greg Hunter points out this misses the main dymanic. “wood for the trees” – Washington has few friends in the lands from Hanoi, Dehli, Islamabad, Tehran, Baghdad, Beirut to Istanbul.

The more interesting questions are surely:
(1) How will the farmer retain control
(2) if the farm gets overthrown, what will replace it?