Posted on 08/25/2009 12:13:10 AM PDT by chuck_the_tv_out
EXCLUSIVE: Gen. David H. Petraeus plans to open an in-house intelligence organization at U.S. Central Command this week that will train military officers, covert agents and analysts who agree to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan for up to a decade.
The organization, to be called the Center for Afghanistan Pakistan Excellence, will be led by Derek Harvey, a retired colonel in the Defense Intelligence Agency who became one of the Gen. Petraeus most trusted analysts during the 2007-08 counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq.
Mr. Harvey distinguished himself in Iraq by predicting that the Iraqi insurgency would spiral out of control, at a time when it was widely underestimated by the Bush administration, in 2003 and 2004.
He later dissented from the emerging consensus in Congress and the CIA, when he said, as early as March 2007, that al Qaeda had been strategically defeated. This was during the early days of the surge, at a time when most of the intelligence community thought the Sunni insurgency was intact.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
How to serve tea and cookies to enemy combatants captured on the battlefield.
How to advise of Miranda Rights in 49 different languages.
How to build mass graves for the innocent men, women and children murdered in terror attacks.
MI Ping
Hopefully not.
Based upon the article I read yesterday in the Washington Times, this is a good idea. The need for long term folks is quite true. I remember when the 1st Gulf War started, DIA had 1/2 a person covering Iraq. And the old US Army ITAC got called on to provide the ground OB and photo analysis for the DIA run joint operations center. That was something DIA had boasted it could man on its own and when the war came, it was the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force intel folks in the DC area who were called to man it.
As an old intel adviser with several current clients in “the biz” - this is a good idea.
Colonel, USAFR
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