Everyone, from the 9/11 Commission on down, seems surprised and astonished at the way the various US intelligence agencies dropped the ball on terrorism and Al Queada.
The Ivory Madonna wonders why.
US intelligence missed the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941.
Sputnik was a completely surprise to US intelligence in 1957.
In 1961, due to CIA failures, the Bay of Pigs invasion was a total failure and an embarrassment to the US.
Forty years afterwards, unanswered questions still surround the JFK assassination. Intelligence agencies missed the other spectacular assassinations of the period, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.
In 1975, faulty intelligence sent the would-be rescuers of the U.S.S. Mayaguez to the wrong island. 41 US combat deaths resulted.
The 1978-79 revolution in Iran, which overthrew the Shah and began the Hostage Crisis, came as a surprise as far as US intelligence was concerned.
No intelligence agency gave any warnings of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.
Throughout the Cold War, US intelligence consistently overestimated the size and capabilities of the Soviet Union, to the point of showing the population of Moscow twice as large as it really was. Endless documentation that came to light after the USSR dissolved, shows that US intelligence about the USSR and the Eastern Bloc was mistaken on a spectacular scale.
In 1993, the FBI screwed up massively and famously in Waco, Texas. The same year, Ramzi Yousef and his people bombed the World Trade Center...with no advance warning from US intelligence.
No intelligence agency was able to predict the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
US intelligence missed Pakistan's surprise nuclear-bomb detonations in 1998.
The Ivory Madonna could go on and on, but she's not going to waste her time or yours. Suffice it to say that US intelligence failures regarding 9/11, or Afghanistan, or Iraq come as no surprise to her.
What does astonish her, is how the government (any government) keeps trusting what these jokers say.
M.
The Ivory Madonna's story is told in Dance for the Ivory Madonna by Don Sakers.
Moved to new site
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With the (temporary?) end of the Legion, this seemed a good time to move to my
own Legion site.
Over there you'll find a post on what I would do with the L...
10 years ago
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