I'll take your challenge. But first I have to take you on a history lesson.
And it has nothing to do with Condi Rice or George Bush, or even Usama bin Laden. It never did. It's about how intelligence analysis reeks of something called the f*#ker factor.
I started posting this about twenty-four hours ago when I saw how the Left was going to start attacking the President over two lines in a memo. As usual, what the left-wing talking heads, Democratic party hacks, and the rest of the Usual Suspects know about history can be found on the back of a matchbook, but I digress.
It sort of goes like this:
In mid-November of 1941, all we knew was that the Imperial Japanese Navy's First Mobile Fleet lay at anchorage in Hiroshima Bay. Then six carriers of the Mobile Fleet vanished into the ether. All that was left was Battleship Division One (BatDiv 1), led by the flagship of the Combined Fleet, the Yamato.
Six carriers, led by Admiral Nagumo aboard Akagi, had gone to Hokkaido Island where other Japanese ships were staging for an expedition known as Operation HAWAII. There was some intelligence that made its way to America that traced First Mobile Fleet that far. Then on November 26th, 1941, the task force vanished.
American Naval Intelligence couldn't figure out where six carriers and their support vessels had gone. Now at the same time, a lot of other things were coming into Washington. Guderian was approaching Moscow, and the Brits were, at the time, winning in North Africa (this was before Rommel showed up). Most important to the Americans was the undeclared war with the Third Reich that was eating up so many naval assets from the Pacific Fleet to the Atlantic.
So it came as a shock when the Americans began to receive warnings about a Japanese task force moving south towards the Dutch East Indies. The task force included troop ships that could threaten either Holland's territories or, just as likely, General MacArthur's little army in the Philippine Island chain. Then there were those six carriers.
America had been concentrating so much on Germany that they didn't spend time looking at Japan's capabilities, or the changes in Japanese naval doctrine that Admiral Isoruku Yamamato had attempted to ingrain into Combined Fleet. Our attention was, truly, elsewhere.
Now no one really knew where the First Mobile Fleet had gone to. All we knew was that diplomatic efforts were coming to a head and something dramatic was about to happen ....
...and we lost thousands of men because we didn't figure anything out until Commander Genda's first wave of torpedo bombers put their ordnance in the water in the general direction of the U.S.S. Oklahoma.
But who could really have known? Most people, when they heard that there were six missing Japanese carriers, thought that MacArthur was going to get hit, or that the Mobile Fleet would act in support of landings in the Dutch East Indies. This thinking went right up the line to Admiral Stark, the CNO, and Admiral King, the overall Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. They should have, could have, would have, taken corrective action had they known. But they did not, because they did not truly suspect that Pearl Harbor would be hit. Only some lower ranking guys figured that out, and by then it was too late.
And President Roosevelt probably had little idea that Japan was about to strike at Pearl. He did know that there was a crisis of diplomacy; his last ditch effort for a face-to-face meeting with the Emperor shows this. He probably suspected the Philippines or DEI like everyone else.
And when it happened, all hell broke loose, because no one thought it could happen "here".
The Japanese effort was extraordinarily successful despite the numbers of men involved: keeping secrets was tough in those days.
Now fast forward to Al Qaeda. Here is an outfit that ran a severely compartmentalized operation. Only the pilot crews had any idea of the overall plan. The rest of the guys may have gone along for the ride, thinking it was a hijacking.
But no one could have known. Al Qaeda, at least before we began to take them apart, was that good an outfit. Compartmentalization means that only a select few knew of the plan, and they were all bad guys.
If the Japanese, carrying out an operation despite having to use thousands of men, could surprise us, then it should suprise no one that Bin Laden was able to attack us using nineteen guys with boxcutters.
Bush was "advised" that al Qaeda "might" hijack an aircraft. That was all the information he truly had. That's all the information Condi and Tenet had as well. It does no good to say that if news from Phoenix, Arizona had reached Washington that Arab guys were flying Pipers that ipso facto things would have gone right and September 11th never would have happened. That's an absurdity, and I think that you see a lot of liberals backtracking from some of the clown-car interviews they gave this morning. But Monday Morning Quarterbacks are nothing if not clairvoyant, and I believe that one might see cooler heads prevail in the Democratic cloakroom.
There is an arrogance about this: "had we connected the dots" goes the nauseating, repetitive mantra of the day, "9-11" would never have happened! That deliberately underestimates the resourcefulness and skill of our enemies.
They would have gotten through, and I'll tell you why. If someone had come to the FBI with solid intel that targets in New York and Washington would be hit by mad Arab guys with boxcutters who would proceed to fly planes into buildings, they'd have thought that person to be daft.
The scenario was that far-fetched.
That's what bin Laden and Yamamato were counting on.
Be Seeing You,
Chris