Re:Why spies never discover anything useful
by dragontamer on Monday December 02, 2013 @10:43AM
(#6834291)
Beyond Bin Laden: but figuring out the viability of attacking the Nuclear Arsenal of Iran, determining who is Friend / Foe in Syria vs Friend/Foe in Lybia (notice how we have decided that all parties in Syria are enemies: saving us considerable amounts of money. Also, that prevented the US from entering another war. Our only concern is the Chemical weapons that we have known about)
Speaking of Syria: spies and so forth were who determined whether or not Syria even _used_ chemical weapons.
It was a SIGINT Intercept. Spies are extrodinarily useful for figuring out the truth when international incidents occur. And knowing who is lying, why they're lying, what their motivations are, etc. etc. These are all important foreign-intelligence missions that Spies do their best to figure out for their country.
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Now of course, spies get it wrong sometimes. The famous Iraq situation was brought about because the CIA focused on one bit of evidence that turned out to be falsified. But nonetheless, the general "intelligence successes" strongly outweigh the "intelligence failures" in the past decades.
Speaking of Syria: spies and so forth were who determined whether or not Syria even _used_ chemical weapons.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/26/idf-intercept-shows-sy...
It was a SIGINT Intercept. Spies are extrodinarily useful for figuring out the truth when international incidents occur. And knowing who is lying, why they're lying, what their motivations are, etc. etc. These are all important foreign-intelligence missions that Spies do their best to figure out for their country.
--------------
Now of course, spies get it wrong sometimes. The famous Iraq situation was brought about because the CIA focused on one bit of evidence that turned out to be falsified. But nonetheless, the general "intelligence successes" strongly outweigh the "intelligence failures" in the past decades.