By Larry Johnson
June 22, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- Are we
witnessing the consequences of legalized
marijuana causing contact highs among the
intelligence community that surrounds
Washington, DC? How else to explain the parade
of political and military analysts now seized
with angst over the growing gulf between what
they claimed would happen to Russia in Ukraine
and the stark reality. Hell, even the CIA is
trying to figure out what went wrong with its
analysis and is still getting it wrong.
Remarkable.
The problem with the CIA is simple–when you
prioritize hiring people because of their
embrace of pronouns and degenerate sexuality
over recruiting accomplished, genuinely educated
people equipped with critical thinking skills,
do not be surprised that the juvenile
mediocrities perform poorly. How is a gender
fluid “them” with no military experience and no
foreign language skills going to predict the
military outcome of a conflict where the
attacking force is outnumbered 3 to 1?
Failure is supposed to be a great teacher.
But that instruction only succeeds if the pupil
is open to learning hard lessons. The CIA has
become a purple haired clown show. Just take a
gander at the of this article from the Business
Insider–US
intel officials admit they didn’t see that
Russia’s military was a ‘hollow force.’ Here’s
what they did see and how they missed it.
Russia is now a “hollow force?” The only
hollow thing in this example are the empty
noggins of the morons masquerading as
intelligence analysts. Check out their excuses
for
getting it wrong:
- The Russian force the US military and
intelligence agencies believed to be a
near-peer adversary hasn’t shown up. The
force that did appear had its main thrust
blunted by smaller Ukrainian units.
- “What we did not see from the inside was
sort of this hollow force” that lacked an
effective non-commissioned officer corps,
leadership training, and effective
doctrines, Berrier said of the Russians.
- While US intelligence agencies
misinterpreted the effectiveness of the
Russian and Ukrainian militaries, they
provided accurate information about Russia’s
intentions in the months prior to Russia’s
attack, which began on February 24.
- “When you deal with a foreign actor,
analysts can fall prey to a number of mental
traps, from confirmation bias, availability
bias, or even favoring existing analytic
lines over new information,” Michael E. van
Landingham, a former Russia analyst at the
CIA, told Insider.
But this is all nonsense. There is this thing
called the internet. It actually allows an
inquiring mind to go back in time and see what
the CIA was saying in February and March. This
is not my opinion. You may read the facts for
yourself:
How US intelligence got it right on
Ukraine–The
CIA director, Bill Burns, a career
diplomat, and his boss, the
director of national intelligence, Avril
Haines, a former deputy CIA director,
came to office a year ago. . . Burns and
Haines refocused on Russia and China,
concentrating on collecting and analyzing
intelligence on the authoritarian regimes of
Russian President Vladimir Putin and
Chinese President Xi Jinping. For the
first time in a long time, American
intelligence agencies were thinking
strategically, looking out over the horizon,
as opposed to reporting what happened five
minutes ago. The result was a clear and
prescient picture of Putin’s intentions
toward Ukraine.
The Intelligence Community Hits a
Grand Slam. Now, It Must Help Ukraine Win–The
Biden administration is also entitled to
some applause. It “flooded the zone” with
authorized disclosures of intelligence prior
to the Russian invasion. . . . The more
recent disclosures were also designed as a
deterrent, to get inside Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s decision-making process and
perhaps cause him to think twice before
hitting the “go” button. . . . The
intelligence community along with U.S.
military special operations forces must
prepare to conduct and/or support a
Ukrainian insurgency campaign. The model
should be Afghanistan in 1980, just after
the Soviet invasion. . . . At the same time,
the intelligence community must — and will —
look for and encourage diplomats and
intelligence officers serving at Russian
embassies abroad who are making the decision
whether or not to jump from Putin’s ship. .
. . The intelligence community will also
watch to see signs that tens of thousands,
or perhaps more, brave Russians are getting
ready to take to their streets. . . .
Finally, there’s the intelligence
community’s support of Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky. . . . Zelensky vs.
Putin. Leonidas vs. Xerxes. Will history
repeat itself? Perhaps. But let’s hope that
the new Leonidas lives this time to tell the
tale. And that his people triumph in
sovereign democracy alongside him. America
has a stake in this fight. It’s time to make
some history. It’s time to help Ukraine win.
Top American generals on three key
lessons learned from Ukraine–“The
computer models would have said Russia wins
in 72 to 96 hours,” said Marine Corps
Commandant Gen. David Berger. They “cannot
explain why Ukraine is still hanging on. Why
is that?” . . . . It took months for Russian
President Vladimir Putin to amass more than
175,000 Russian troops on the Ukrainian
border. But since those forces mobilized
on Feb. 23, the Russian military has
been embarrassed by one logistical failure
after another. Videos posted on social media
showed lines of tanks and military vehicles
stalled on Ukrainian roads, with no spare
parts available to fix broken vehicles and
no fuel to get them running again. Other
viral videos showed hungry Russian soldiers
who had apparently run out of rations
accepting food from Ukrainians.
The ignorance of the U.S. military commanders
and the oxymoronically named intelligence
community is breathtaking. If you are trying to
predict the outcome of a military operation
there are, as Andrei Martyanov describes in his
must read book (The
(Real) Revolution in Military Affairs) key
variables that must be weighed. One of these is
the nature of the defensive fortifications of
the Ukrainian army. For the love of God, the
entire damn U.S. intelligence community had
eight years to track and identify the formidable
system of trenches, revetments and bunkers the
Ukrainians had constructed. Then there is the
fact that Ukraine’s army outnumbered Russia by
three-to-one. In what drug addled universe does
an analyst conclude and promulgate that a
out-manned Russian army will conquer a country
twice the size of the United Kingdom in four
days?
Perhaps this was a deliberate straw-man
strategy–i.e., play up the Russians as ten feet
tall (knowing all along that they have the
ability to eventually grind the Ukrainians into
talcum powder) and then portray them as a weak,
doddering power. Maybe the terrible analytical
predictions were part of a broader propaganda
campaign.
What I do not understand is why the technical
collection systems at NSA and NIMA (i.e.,
National Imagery and Mapping Agency) apparently
failed to identify the robust Ukrainian
defenses? What should alarm U.S. legislators is
that the CIA still does not have a damn clue
about what is going on. Specifically, describing
Russia as a “hollowed” out force is baseless
nonsense. The complex military operations the
Russians are conducting across a 900 mile front
that stretches from Kharkiv in the north, thru
the Donbas and then southwest to Odessa. Besides
supplying ground forces with ammunition, fuel,
food and medical care, Russian logicians also
are feeding hundreds of thousands of civilians
left homeless because of the fighting. Then
there is the coordination of artillery and
sea-based cruise missiles along with close air
support from fixed wing and rotary wing air
craft.
The CIA is learning the hardway the truth of
Sun Tzu’s aphorism:
If you know the enemy and know yourself,
you need not fear the result of a hundred
battles. If you know yourself but not the
enemy, for every victory gained you will
also suffer a defeat. If you know neither
the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in
every battle.
That is where the United States intelligence
community is; it is ignorant of itself and the
Russians.
One of the old intel codgers, Graham E.
Fuller, who was Vice Chair of the National
Intelligence Council at CIA back when I was an
analyst, has it figured out. He wrote a piece
sure to get him removed from woke Washington, DC
parties:
The war in Ukraine has dragged on long
enough now to reveal certain clear
trajectories. First, two fundamental
realities:
- Putin is to be condemned for launching
this war– as is virtually any leader who
launches any war. Putin can be termed a war
criminal–in good company with George W. Bush
who has killed vastly greater numbers than
Putin.
- Secondary condemnation belongs to the US
(NATO) in deliberately provoking a war with
Russia by implacably pushing its hostile
military organization, despite Moscow’s
repeated notifications about crossing red
lines, right up to the gates of Russia.
This war did not have to be if Ukranian
neutrality, á la Finland and Austria, had
been accepted. Instead Washington has called
for clear Russian defeat.
Contrary to Washington’s triumphalist
pronouncements, Russia is winning the war,
Ukraine has lost the war. Any longer-term
damage to Russia is open to debate.
Sadly for Washington, nearly every single
one of its expectations about this war are
turning out to be incorrect. Indeed the West
may come to look back at this moment as the
final argument against following
Washington’s quest for global dominance into
ever newer and more dangerous and damaging
confrontations with Eurasia. And most of the
rest of the world–Latin America, India, the
Middle East and Africa– find few national
interests in this fundamentally American war
against Russia
Larry C. Johnson is a former analyst at
the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency.
The views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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