The world’s finest newspaper featured a piece on Iran’s mastery of international diplomacy in the post-9/11 world. Read it here. It begins:
WHO would have thought that a friendless theocracy with a Holocaust-denying president, which hangs teenagers in public and stones women to death, could run diplomatic circles around America and its European allies? But Iran is doing just that.
The article goes on to claim, in short, that repercussions from the intelligence errors of Iraq are paralyzing American intelligence. I have no way of knowing whether or not this is true. The article, however, makes a compelling case. Seems to me that getting it somewhat wrong in Iraq should not get inside the minds of the intelligence community and cause them to be indecisive or hyper-cautious. Failure ought to produce better results in future rather than a CYA (cover your a*$) mentality. This is a lesson that is repeatedly learned in business, but that applies to all of life.
Jeff Gissing 