Posted 8:42 AM by Paul
Intelligence

Parliament is about to relase a report from a powerful all party committee on the lessons to be learnt from the Iraq War. Usual stuff....British Armed Forces did a world class job etc. except for two surprising points

• It reveals that some British soldiers were armed only with blanks when they went into battle. Proof if we needed it that we were not prepared because we did not have enough time because the date of the war had been decided months in advance in Washington.
• The existence of "woeful intelligence" which "left troops expecting garlands of flowers" instead of the hostiltity of a population hardened by a bombing campaign against them"

The first point reminded me of my father's stories about life in the Home Guard during World War II. Wooden rifles, all night card games and nothing more than blind faith. If Hitler had made a full landing during 1940 he would have walked it. Well that's what dad reckoned anyway

The second point made me want to get semantical. We didn't need better "intelligence" in the sense of accurate information from our spies. We needed intelligence from our politicians as in the ability to reach a reasoned conclusion based facts and evidence. No one likes to be invaded by foreigners. Even if they are nice foreigners. Why on Earth would you welcome anyone who had bombed your kids. Even if they had done it with the best intentions.

If it wasn't serious it would be funny.