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November 7, 2001	Wednesday	Shaba’an 20, 1422

Blunder replaces intelligence

By Peter Preston

LONDON: There are, you may distantly recall, four horsemen to this pending apocalypse: military action, financial action, diplomatic action - and intelligence. But without intelligence, there is precious little useful action of any kind. And that, two months in, is precisely where we find ourselves. Without intelligence. Time to shape up and kick a few equestrian backsides.

Four in particular suggest themselves. They belong to George Tenet, director of the CIA, Robert Mueller, director of the FBI, and their British cohorts, Sir Richard Dearlove and Sir Stephen Lander. As a disenchanted press begins to cry for ritual sacrifices, for example of poor Geoff Hoon, Britain’s defence secretary, here is a quartet of sacrifices that might actually do some good. The war may be a misnomered, misbegotten one: the tactics lugubriously resorted to may seem crude or counterproductive. What is not in doubt, though, is that sometime, somehow there will have to be a turning point that can reasonably be hailed as victory: for letting the master perpetrators of Sept 11 run free to murder thousands more is not an option.

And since the twin towers collapsed things have grown worse, not better. Outside America, in the hills of southern Afghanistan, Osama sits unscathed with his video camera. Why do the ‘crack’ special forces teams not go in and root him out? Because they have no idea where he is. Because information on the ground (about almost anything useful) is chronically deficient. Because the rising of the Pashtun tribes against the Taliban that CIA analysts predicted simply has not happened. Because the Taliban are tougher nuts than those fabled experts in their cosy offices supposed.

The carpet bombing that is turning off the Arab world was never, of course, a part of the plan. The weeks of collateral damage and friendly fire were never strategic imperatives. They are there, continuing, because nobody has a brighter idea or better information. Thud and blunder replacing intelligence. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.