Posted on 09/11/2015 5:22:13 AM PDT by Shane
Politics: In an unprecedented revolt, 50 military intelligence analysts are charging high-ranking officials with cooking the books on Islamic State's growth and strength for political reasons. It's high time for house-cleaning. Fifty intelligence analysts whose job is to honestly assess what's going on in the Middle East have charged their reports about Islamic State's rise were systematically altered by senior officials to the opposite of what they meant: "Happy talk" about the terror group being "on the run" and merely a "JV" version of al-Qaida, according to a report in the Daily Beast. In a letter to the Pentagon Inspector General's Office, the analysts said their reports were corrupted to further the White House's narrative that the Middle East was little more than George Bush's war, and President Obama's premature pullout from Iraq and Afghanistan amounted to "victories." It wasn't, and they didn't. The shambles of the Middle East and the surprise rise of Islamic State show that something different was going on, and now we know it had a name: Obama's Domestic Political Priorities. It's an outrage, given that the U.S. spends $17.4 billion on its military intelligence program and $58.7 billion on its entire "black budget" of secret operations. The reason these exist is to find the truth and act on it. The analysts' anger is wholly understandable. It's undoubtedly made worse by the fact that the information used was often obtained at great personal risk by spies in the field — for nothing. If the truth doesn't matter anymore, there is little purpose for these operations — and, worse, justification for the likes of National Security Agency contractor Ed Snowden to publicly spill secrets. Political manipulation of spy reports is an old spy-novel theme, of course. But the fact that 50 analysts went through channels —
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Sometimes I wonder why we express so much verbal outrage at the corruption which flows through the veins of the federal government when it changes nothing. No one is accountable, no one has handcuffs placed on their wrists, no one is even fired. The guilty are rewarded and promoted.
I understand more and more why the Founders eventually concluded that words were not going to achieve justice or fair treatment for the colonies. Actions speak louder than words, always.
Graeme Wood’s March 2015 Atlantic article “What ISIS Really Wants” brought back a few bad memories from my days at the Pentagon, where I was mobilized to the Joint Staff Intelligence after 9/11. One such memory was the frequent assertion, beginning around 2003, that “Sistani is a ‘quietist’.” Another was the March 2007 Foreign Affairs article “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood.”
As both narratives supported strategic distractions, the fact that the two came together in the Atlantic article raised red flags. We have been here before—many times. These flags will be addressed in the following analysis in the context of their associated concerns.
It is argued that the Atlantic article supports narratives that continue to justify the outsourcing of the production of America’s information requirements in support of the counterterror effort to non-U.S. actors, in this case Middle Eastern, in much the way that the Muslim Brotherhood controls the domestic debate through the “countering violent extremism” (CVE) narrative.
[snip]
The shift to a Brotherhood-friendly policy set in motion a series of events beginning with the production of documents in 2008 at DHS and NCTC that placed the language of jihad off limits when analyzing (or even discussing) slamic-based terrorism. This was followed in 2010 by DHS bringing in Brotherhood leaders to help prop up the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) protocols that resulted in DHS institutionalizing the CVE through the production of “CVE Training Guidance & Best Practices” and related policy documents. It is through the CVE process that the purging of work product and personnel continues to this day.
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Stephen Coughlin is a lawyer and former Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence analyst who was in effect fired by the Pentagon at the request of Hesham Islam who has since been suspected of being an Islamic terrorist sympathizer.
Great commentary!
“reports about Islamic State’s rise were systematically altered”
It’s a shame that this post is about to run off of the front page with only 4 comments.
Unfortunately there are so many scandals, its hard to keep focus on them all. My major disappointment is that we have no team on the field. The GOP is filled with eunuchs who are only interested in their own power and frankly could care less about our Country.
Cruz
“Cruz”
Agree!
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