Danny Schechter: Hiding America's Recent History!

Some years ago, I met a major in American intelligence, a member of the "Red Cell Unit." As he explained it to me, his unit was actually charged with assessing other spy shops by offering other views, critiquing intelligence estimates, and perhaps even evaluating security systems like the specialists who test airport systems by probing for their soft spots and vulnerabilities, and seeing if thy can beat them. This officer had been sent as one more gung-ho officer into the war in Iraq only to return, like many, if not disillusioned, aware that all was not working well. He was actually involved in guarding so called HVT's (imprisoned High Value Targets), including Saddam Hussein himself. The officer came to respect Hussein for his intelligence before his untimely demise with a rope around his neck. Saddam's many crimes and errors were often dwarfed by our own. The United States today has a vast intelligence apparatus on the ground, in the sky and even in space. Technically, it puts to shame the old Soviet Union's ability to monitor what people are doing and saying. The US system sucks up millions of terabytes of data daily, but that doesn't mean that what is reported is understood: The analysts seek to make sense of it, but the policy makers are often so locked into templates of action and preformulated strategies that insure the input doesn't lead to course corrections or changes in direction. The policy makers operate with a kind of intellectual "locked-in" disease that freezes out new ideas.