[politics, mostly just shaking head at odd behavior and useless news stories]
An article today in the NY Times informing us that hostile forces in Iraq are acquiring intelligence information about the comings and goings of various people they would like to gak by hanging out on street corners and watching, and similar reasonably straightforward means, and that this isn’t difficult because we’ve got a large footprint for pretty much everything we do there.
No shit?
The only thing that really caught my eye in this was this line:
The American-led alliance’s intelligence system “continues to get better every day in theater, and we receive credible information which assists us in pre-empting potential attacks against our soldiers,” a military officer said.
Sounds like an awfully defensive position whence to be planning one’s intelligence operations. In fact, that sounds a lot like someone thinking in terms of a siege mentality. I sincerely hope that sort of mindset isn’t too widespread among the American forces there, or we’re going to be in for a lot of trouble quickly.
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 
Pre-empt. Read: military definition for the identification and destruction of enemy forces.
The best defence is a good offense.
Simon
Didn’t you always say that military intelligence isn’t intelligent?