A Failure of Nerve

The 9/11 Commission declared that the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by Al Qaeda resulted from a "failure of imagination," in that no one in the intelligence community could imagine that terrorists would use aircraft as weapons. With today's news reports -- based on careful reading of the Commission's final report -- that senior officials of the CIA in 1998 scrapped a plan to kidnap Osama bin Laden as "too risky," that conclusion appears suspect, homogenized for domestic political consumption. What we had was a failure of nerve. The CIA's leadership was risk-averse, but the head of the agency's bin Laden unit thought it was "the perfect plan."

You don't get anywhere in this world without trying. It wasn't that these bozos couldn't think outside the box. Rather, they were saddled with decades of covert action failure, so were afraid to do anything. Paralysis by analysis. The cinema glorifies the intelligence community as bold risk-takers. Well they're not; just a bunch of scared old ladies frightened of failure.

 Posted by glenn