Democrats: Naive Intelligence Gatherers

Traveling recently in Iraq, Pelosi noted, “If we’re going to have a diminished military presence, we’ll have to have an increased intelligence presence.” This has been the main Democratic argument against the whole idea of the war on terror — that guns and bombs are no substitute for timely information. “This war on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement operation,” Sen. John Kerry once claimed.

But this object of praise — intelligence-gathering — is again the object of liberal assault.

To what techniques are Democrats referring when they praise intelligence gathering?  It’s certainly not enhanced interrogation.  As we’ve seen with their outrage during the Bush administration, It’s definitely not electronic intercepts.  Presumably that leaves the more direct forms of human intelligence (relying on agents and informants) and imagery intelligence as the only viable options.

But human intelligence is incredibly messy, involving waves of illegalities of which I doubt Democrats would openly endorse should such methods become public.  Furthermore, the CIA - the American agency charged with human intelligence responsibilities - is routinely vilified (unless, of course, your last name is Wilson or Plame and you’re sticking your finger in the eye of the Bush administration), humiliated, and subjected to budget cuts whenever Democrats come to power.  Essentially, Democrats value an incredibly naive approach to human intelligence:  You’ll find out all you need to know if you just go out and talk to reputable people.

Imagery intelligence has its own problems.  1.)  It’s incredibly expensive (and thus affected by Democratic distate for spending money on things other than socialism), 2.)  It’s most effective when used in coordination with other forms of intelligence (human, signals, etc.).  3.)  It only measures capabilities and cannot easily discern intentions.

Ironically, the faulty intelligence assessment in 2003 that Iraq had WMD - the blunt object repeatedly used by the Democratic Party to disfigure the Bush administration - relied on the two forms of intelligence that Democrats herald as the solutions to our problems:  imagery intelligence and legally obtained human intelligence.

In the real world (where Jason Bourne does not live) there’s never a reliable, high-ranking defector with intimate knowledge of all of the enemies’ plans.  Cear, convincing, irrefutable evidence is never gathered from one series of photographs.  The evidence is always convoluted, rarely complete and commonly dependent on sources of ill-repute.

The tools of intelligence are dependent upon one another.  Democrats say that they want to focus on intelligence gathering, but then they condemn the use of tools that makes intelligence gathering actually possible.  (And that’s not even addressing the pervasive attitude on the Left that ”law enforcement”  and “intelligence operations” are one in the same.)