Intelligence Dominance

Weekly Standard ^ | 07/31/2006 | Richard H. Shultz Jr. & Roy Godson

[Lorianne]

The colonel was just back from Iraq when we met with him in the fall of 2005. He spoke in the blunt way of a soldier who had served 25 years in elite secret units. He had been in plenty of precarious situations and had the battle scars to show for it. The special operations unit he commanded knew how to surprise and kill unsuspecting enemies and had scored some successes, but the colonel was pessimistic about one thing: "No amount of training can prepare you to hunt down the bad guys after midnight when the intelligence you receive does not pinpoint their hideouts."

Other commanders we spoke with who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan had also experienced frustration in their mission--capturing or killing insurgent, terrorist, and militia leaders and key operatives, and taking out the factories where they make improvised explosive devices (IEDs). They echoed the colonel's message: "Actionable intelligence" was often absent from the U.S. war effort. A commander whose area of operations had been Tikrit told us, "Rather than intelligence on precise insurgent targets--'There is a unit of Jihadi fighters using the abandoned Bus Station on Tikriti Road as a base'--we would be told to 'Search for a Jihadi unit in a two-three block area around the Bus Station.'" The difference was between looking for a needle on a platter and a needle in a haystack; between a precise mission and an indefinite one requiring too much time on the ground in hostile territory.

[marron]

ping

[humint]

When we're spending $40 billion a year on intelligence and committing 150,000 men to the Iraqi front, why can't we create the actionable intelligence required to roll up the insurgents?

It's not about money. It's never been about money. In fact, most of the time, intelligence dominance comes from the kind of relationships you cannot buy. Money cheapens those kinds of relationships. A fact that's probably tough to swallow for our corporate minded war fighters... Maybe they should stop scheduling meetings, and start building the kinds of relationships that invariably lead to intelligence dominance.

[ChinaThreat]

I agree. In addition, electronic intelligence gathering should be used in a supplementary role as opposed to a generational role. We are really hurting in our humint capabilities.