Tag Archives: Institute for Science and International Security

It’s Not A Matter Of Intelligence

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On Wednesday, the Center for Security Policy posted an article about the recent offensive in Iraq by State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) terrorists.

The article states:

Some former intelligence officers are blaming this failure on a lack of human intelligence sources in Iraq and an over-reliance on technical intelligence collection.

Congressman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, disagrees. He says the Iraq crisis is a policy and not an intelligence failure.

Rogers says the signs were there about the ISIS threat and the deteriorating situation in Iraq but Obama officials ignored them. He contends that “It was very clear to me years ago that ISIS was pooling up in a dangerous way — building training camps, drawing in jihadists from around the world. We saw all of that happening.”

 What happened in Iraq was to a large extent the result of the failure of America to leave troops there after we declared the war in Iraq. The troops would not have been as much of a military force as a limiting force against the retribution of the Shiite government against the Sunnis who had previously been in power.

The author of the article, Fred Fleitz writes:

 I believe the crisis in Iraq is a major U.S. policy failure due to the Obama administration’s failure to leave a small troop presence behind after the 2011 troop withdrawal and the repeated tendency by Obama officials to discount and downplay the continuing threat from radical Islamist groups. We saw this in September 2012 when Obama officials claimed the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was the result of an anti-Muslim video and not an attack by radical Islamists.

The intelligence oversight committees should review classified analysis on Iraq, Syria, and ISIS produced over the last year to determine whether intelligence agencies failed to provide adequate warning of the ISIS threat. I believe such an inquiry will find that U.S. intelligence analysts provided the Obama administration with excellent analysis about ISIS and the deteriorating situation in Iraq but Obama officials ignored it.

 President Obama’s Middle East policy has been a failure. It is time for him to either listen to the people giving him good advice or find people who will give him good advice.

Remember The Drone Taken Control Of By Iran ?

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Hal Lindsey is a Biblical Scholar who focuses on current events and how they fit into Biblical prophecy. He hosts a show on Trinity Broadcasting Network that is also available on his website. Every week he sends out an email with a brief summary of what he will be talking about on his show.

This week there was an interesting quote:

I’ll also report on the unmanned drone that the Israeli Air Force shot down over Israel last week. Coincidentally, that Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), was essentially a copy of the RQ-170. Remember the RQ-170? That’s the super-advanced, and highly secret, United States UAV that Iran was mysteriously able to commandeer and capture after it flew into Iranian airspace last December.

At the time, the administration’s spinmeisters assured us that the RQ-170 was much too advanced to be of any use to Iran. In fact, one analyst said that losing the RQ-170 to Iran was a bit like “dropping a Ferrari into an oxcart culture.”

Well, apparently the bumpkins didn’t try to hitch an ox to it! Taking a cue from their friends the Russians and Chinese (who paid dearly to get a look at the technology), they reverse-engineered it and now they (or their proxy, Hezbollah) are flying it over Israel to get a closer look.

This apparent miscalculation by some of our defense and intelligence communities’ experts makes me a little nervous about some of their other evaluations. For instance, last week The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) released a report that estimates that Iran will produce enough weapons-grade uranium to arm a nuclear weapon in the next “two to four months.” That’s 120 days!

But the report drew a “clear distinction” between Tehran’s ability to actually produce a viable warhead and its ability to make the fissile core of a warhead by producing 55 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from its large lesser-enriched stockpiles.

Isn’t that sort of like assuming that if one drops “a Ferrari into an oxcart culture,” the bumpkins will try to hitch an ox to it? The Iranians proved the administration’s experts wrong on that assumption, didn’t they! So why should we think they will not surprise us again with how quickly they can produce a working nuclear missile?

On the other hand, that may be why the United States, NATO, and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council just completed the largest naval exercise ever conducted in the Persian Gulf. They were demonstrating our mine-sweeping prowess and how quickly we can take command of the Strait of Hormuz if Iran decides to try and close it.

I will admit to being a news junkie, and nowhere did I see it reported that the drone shot down over Israel was a copy of the RQ-170 brought down and captured by Iran. This is disturbing. I guess when you are not capable of advancing your own technology, you simply steal from the people who have spent the money and done the work.

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