When Imagination Failed: Revisiting Intelligence Failures
Yogi Berra opined that “it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” but over the past 80 years there has been more than enough intelligence collected to prevent costly failures. From Pearl Harbor in 1941 to this year’s invasion of the Capitol, there were strong intelligence indicators of the tumultuous events that were to ensue. Currently, there is a dearth of information from congressional sources regarding the insurrection of January 6, and no indication of a comprehensive investigation to find reasons for the breakdown. The failure of our trillion-dollar national security community to provide warning of a violent threat to the seat of governance remains troubling.
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The USS Liberty: a Well-Planned Accident
Today marks the 56th anniversary of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, which has been described by too many U.S. and Israeli accounts as an accident. In fact, the attack took place after eight hours of aerial surveillance by Israel, and it involved a two-hour air and naval attack that killed 34 sailors and wounded an…
The Mainstream Media’s Unwillingness to Challenge U.S. Militarization
The Post regularly states that the United States spends as much on defense as the next 10 or 11 nations combined, but the cruel fact is that we spend as much as all other nations combined. The global total for defense spending is around $2.5 trillion, and U.S. defense spending exceeds $1.2 trillion. The Pentagon’s budget for next year is $886 billion, but that is not the full extent of defense spending. The budget for the Veteran’s Administration is over $120 billion, which takes total defense spending to more than $1 trillion. There is significant defense spending in the budgets of the intelligence community, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Homeland Security, bringing total defense spending to at least $1.2 trillion.
