LewRockwell
It is often noted that the phrase “Military Intelligence” is an oxymoron.
The US intelligence community collects data on the whole world, but only when that data becomes important to the US state is a deep analysis and targeted collection performed. While intelligence in wartime can and should be driven by decentralized requests from the field commanders, the intelligence community has long been organized around serving the ruling state, and giving the state what it asks for. This makes sense, because the US Congress has not declared war in over 80 years. At the same time, this makes no sense at all, because arguably the US state has been at war continually for over 80 years.
The implication of this dichotomy, and confirmation of the very title of this talk, was demonstrated a typical way on May 3rd of this year, when CENTCOM Commander General Erik Kurilla rushed to tweet that his command had conducted “a unilateral strike in Northwest Syria targeting a senior Al Qaeda official.” Twelve days later, CENTCOM investigated itself and discovered that they had actually targeted and killed a Syrian shepherd and father of ten, and there were no Al Qaeda or any other bad guys near the area. First response was to delete the tweet. 20 days after the tweetable event, CNN reported, well, it’s too bad, but at least some of his staff had urged Kurilla to hold off on the tweet until they knew who they actually killed…
