This CQ article is one of the most important and interesting articles I've read on U.S. intelligence efforts in a long time. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons I can't comment very extensively on the contents, but very generally, I can say that if it is true, it helps explain why tactical military operations can go relatively well while the overall Iraq situation continues to spiral out of control.
The piece essentially says that the U.S. intelligence operations in Iraq are completely crippled by a combination of security issues, political idiocy, lack of planning, and a lack of language and culture knowledge. More importantly, though, it lays out precisely the effects of these problems (if, in fact, the reporting is accurate).
It is absolutely worth a read; here are a few highlights:
According to several well informed intelligence sources, hundreds of CIA operatives have become virtual prisoners in the Green Zone, the sprawling American enclave whose high walls and guards separate the U.S. embassy, military command and related civilian agencies from the raging sectarian violence in Baghdad’s streets. [...]The article makes a comparison to Vietnam, in which the author was an intelligence officer, indicating that then, it was still fairly common for Vietnamese to interact with troops and Americans in general, greatly facilitating the intelligence operations. In Iraq, conversely, it is almost universally unacceptable to interact with an American. It is impossible to run any kind of counterinsurgency campaign without a staggering amount of informants and information, and failures this significant in both tactical and strategic intelligence speaks volumes. While people debate the number of troops, the question of whether they'll be able to complete any kind of coherent or effective mission gets overlooked, and this article starkly addresses that issue.
Multiple CIA sources, who spoke freely only in exchange for anonymity, said the agency’s mission of recruiting and managing human spies in Baghdad was stillborn in the weeks following the 2003 invasion and has never recovered, despite adding hundreds of personnel in the past few years. That failure has virtually crippled U.S. strategic intelligence — inside information on the personalities and plans of the often hostile U.S.-backed government, not just the multiplying insurgent groups and armed militias — in Iraq. [...]
Tactical intelligence — the locations and types of enemy troops and weapons — is also suffering from a lack of access to the population and almost nonexistent language skills on the part of both CIA and military intelligence personnel, say these same sources, all of whom have decades of experience in clandestine operations.
