From Tuesday night’s episode of Frontline, here’s Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s bin Laden team:
The test of an intelligence officer is not so much the ability to accumulate information; it’s to judge between different pieces of information. There is what you could call “intelligence information” available to prove almost any case you wanted to prove, if you were a non-discerning intelligence amateur.
The Bush Administration continually starts with the conclusions and then carefully picks facts to support those conclusions. That might be a good way to win an argument, but it’s a terrible way to fight a war. They may not have much respect for “the reality-based community,” but in real life-and-death struggles, reality keeps trumping fantasy, and real people pay with their lives.
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