Intelligence disconnect
I read the cover story "Broken Intelligence" [August 2] with interest. It is a well-written, comprehensible, and insightful piece. One of the reasons cited for an incompetent intelligence community was the lack of fluent linguists. Having lived in the Chicago area for the past seven years and traveled in many countries, I can say there is no language so rare that there are few linguists for it. The challenge for the intelligence community is to reduce the bureaucratic barriers associated with bringing these people into the intelligence workforce. If you would like to hire an Arabic-speaking translator, what are the chances that you will find a qualified one who has U.S. citizenship? It is imperative to build an intelligence community capable of acting with agility and not one that gets caught up in red tape.
KEVIN C. DESOUZA
Chicago
"This was a failure of policy, management, capability, and, above all, a failure of imagination." It is the 9/11 commission report's concern with the role of the imagination in public affairs that really deserves attention. To some, the revelation that Iran abetted the criminals who launched the 9/11 attacks demonstrates that the Bush administration, in prosecuting the war in Iraq, has confused its priorities. But it can also indicate that our enemies are willing to disregard their philosophical differences, especially if they see the United States, or the West in general, as their primary target. Still, one does not have to be convinced that a well-defined link ever existed between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden to appreciate how the imagination can help formulate policy. We should be willing to think and act "outside of the box," both in how we perceive the threats we face and in the ways in which we address them. Certainly we should deploy the full range of diplomatic maneuvers but also be prepared to muster the resolve required to take the fight to our enemies, wherever and whenever they emerge.
CHARLES H. RIEPER, PH.D.
Columbus, Ohio
Policymakers are fully aware of the iffy nature of intelligence reports. So, they typically set some independent test that puts the burden back on the other party. So what about Iraq? In "How Saddam Failed the Yeltsin Test" in the New York Times , Stephen Sestanovich states: "In our debate about the war, we need to acknowledge that the administration set the right test for Saddam Hussein--and that he did not pass it." The test was simply for Saddam to comply with existing international law, in the form of the United Nations Security Council resolutions. If he had complied, then war would have been averted. Our doing nothing would have been foolhardy.
DAVID JOHNSON
Rexburg, Idaho
With its almost exclusive focus on intelligence and counterterrorism in preventing attacks on America, the final report of the 9/11 commission sadly misses some very important points with respect to U.S. foreign policy. For more than 50 years, America's policy on Israel has disrupted millions of Palestinian lives and alienated us from the Arab world. Now we sit and wonder how the slaughter of 3,000 innocent Americans on 9/11 might have been prevented. Unpopular though it might be, the answer seems obvious: not better intelligence, and not better counterterrorism, but better U.S. policy in the Middle East.
MARK C. EADES
Berkeley, Calif.
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