{"id":120,"date":"2004-01-29T08:03:28","date_gmt":"2004-01-29T13:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=120"},"modified":"2005-12-03T17:15:47","modified_gmt":"2005-12-03T22:15:47","slug":"mistakes-were-made-dept-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/mistakes-were-made-dept-part-2","title":{"rendered":"“Mistakes Were Made” Dept., Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, David Kay’s report on intelligence failures re: WMDs in Iraq is harsh. But it’s not as if mistakes like this are unheard of in the intelligence community. Anyone who wants to treat the whole issue as an opportunity to bash the White House ought to sit down and read Intelligence Wars<\/em><\/a>, a collection of essays\/reviews by Thomas Powers.<\/p>\n

In particular, the chapter “Soviet Intentions and Capabilities” yields the following money quote:<\/p>\n

“Our answer,” said Sherman Kent, [chairman of the CIA’s Board of National Estimates], “is to say nothing is going to happen in the foreseeable future, and say it in the most alarming way possible.”<\/p>\n

The history of intel\/cointel is a map of misreadings, to misapply Harold Bloom. Just because you think the president is an ignoramus doesn’t mean that this particular instance of misreading was malicious. After all, he did<\/em> run on the least interventionist platform in 75 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, David Kay’s report on intelligence failures re: WMDs in Iraq is harsh. But it’s not as if mistakes like this are unheard of in the intelligence community. Anyone who wants to treat the whole issue as an opportunity to bash the White House ought to sit down and read Intelligence Wars, a collection of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading ““Mistakes Were Made” Dept., Part 2″<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1W","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6873,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/droning-on","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":0},"title":"Droning on","author":"Gil","date":"February 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"David Carr has a good piece in the NYTimes today about the public's lack of interest in the U.S. government's use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to assassinate people. You should read it. Drone warfare came up in my podcast interview with Ron Rosenbaum, and will again in next week's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":297,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/there-is-no-co-man","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":1},"title":"There IS no CO, man","author":"Gil","date":"July 8, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Fallujah's going to be a real problem:\"We could take the city,\" [Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani, Iraq's director of national intelligence] said, \"but we would have to kill everyone in it.\"As Ralph Peters puts it:\"Nothing says that wars of attrition have to be fair.\"","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":355,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":2},"title":"DoubtsAccording to a magazine called\u2026","author":"Gil","date":"September 16, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"DoubtsAccording to a magazine called Expatica (for American expatriots living in Europe), German intel denies Die Welt's story about Syria testing chemical weapons in Darfur:German intelligence sources said Wednesday they had no information which could confirm a report claiming Syria had tested chemical weapons in cooperation with the government of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5450,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-july-23-2010","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":3},"title":"Unrequired Reading: July 23, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"July 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"In honor of Comic-Con, there isn't a single comics-related link in this week's Unrequired Reading! Surprisingly,\u00c2\u00a0dandyism runs in the family. * * * The shamans of the Marine Corps? Sounds a little Men Who Stare At Goats to me. * * * Nothing can stop that Old Spice Guy. *\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1572,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/mistakes-were-made-by-me","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":4},"title":"Mistakes were made (by me)","author":"Gil","date":"July 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a neat little article on Warren Buffett's willingness to learn from his mistakes. \u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0A key to investing well is a willingness to look stupid, Buffett says. \"Most managers have very little incentive to make the intelligent-but-with-some-chance-of-looking-like-an-idiot decision,\" Buffett wrote in 1984. Most would prefer \"failing conventionally.\" He added: \"Lemmings\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":180,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/in-the-maushaus","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":5},"title":"In the MausHaus","author":"Gil","date":"March 8, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I just landed in Orlando for the Parenteral Drug Association's annual meeting. It was my seventh flight this year. Fortunately, I don't have any air-travel till June, when I head out to the BIO show. For some reason (possibly the coffee I had before the flight), I was pretty wired\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}