Army Leaders Defend Flawed Intelligence System

Outlaw-09,

RIGHT ON!

Just because we can manufacture the cloud -- and people can make the big bucks off of it (bigger, I suspect, in China or Russia) -- doesn't make it worthy of pursuit. When often accused of being a fudster, I increasingly fall back on my father's line in refusing wider ties, plaider plaids, etc. in the 1970s, "I'm so far out, I'm in..."

The Textron story, as always, reminds me of a PRT intel meeting in which some U.S. dink-contractor proclaimed the Taliban were shutting down all the girls' schools and trying to poison the students.
¡The Horror!
¡The Horror!
That was not squaring with with what the German soldiers and field workers were saying or the enlisted U.S. soldiers (who, of course, had been excluded from the meeting). Besides the contractor was from DynCorp. (enough said), a notorious bandit up for a very rich contract renewal (more then enough said). Needless to say, that did not pass the smell test. Always follow the money.

Yes, girls were fainting and in the areas of these drop-downs were wafts of some sickly sweet smell (reminiscent of the 'Star Trek' episode of the red corpuscle consuming cloud, ironically). But anyone in the markets or the towns for more then ten minutes had seen what supremely low quality sheiße was flooding in from China. Could it not be cheap perfume, distilled from flowers with herbicides (and not passing 'Western' standards) plus time-honoured peer-suggestiveness, that had precipitated these fainting spells?

So I made the rounds, pointedly avoiding staff officers; civilian intel guys; the 'star' (i.e., plagiarizing) foreign service officer in the PRT; and, above all, the contractors. Then I went into town and asked around. The alternative possibility sounded like a valid possibility, at least in concept. It turned out that it was not perfume but a handy insecticide (of bleach and something else like cheap Pine-Sol) used by grounds-keepers to spray trees to repel mosquitos.

That e-mail went up to the AMB level in Kabul, remembered years later by the COO (AMB) of the Embassy at the time, now AMB to México, thanks to a very good State Department regional senior civilian representative willing to stick his neck out. Was I brilliant? Hell NO! I wasn't brilliant. Just a simple question: ¿Who had more to gain from this rumor, DynCorp or the Taliban with a weaker hold on that northern province with Pashtuns kind of liking their daughters getting educated?

German military intel was key here. The message the Taliban were getting was, "You can stay here, under the norm of Pashto Wali (¿sp?). But do not mess with our culverts or girls schools or WE WILL TURN YOU OUT." That response was thanks to a brilliant German diplomat on the ground who went into Pashtun communities. Another story for another time. The other issue with contracting is a red-herring.

USAID uses the contracting requirements as an excuse to pocket 90% of the funds for its buddies among the (often 'non-profit' [sic or sick]) implementing partners, with whom the contracting insiders often trade places when it is time for the second home that the MRS has been whining about, with most of the precious little left over getting to often greedy and incompetent local implementers who speak just enough English to get by, get over, get money.

¿The tell-tale symptom? I HAVE YET TO MEET A USAID 'PRIVATE SECTOR DEVELOPMENT' EXPERT WITH SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCE IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR...duhhh.

And that is why I say that the U.S. is more corrupt the México, except that we are sharp enough to make it legal and transparent.

Morgan, as you very well know, the U.S. defense industry enjoys cozy ties to congress as well as the military itself, which was what Ike's actual message was about in his farewell address.

The system leans toward awarding the industry strong domestic preference in procurement that although it may not lead to outright failure, it does contribute to inefficiency where congressional district jobs trump war fighting.