All my media colleagues keep asking, "Why didn't we know about 9-11?" and, "What happened to the Iraqi WMD?" and, "Why can't we find Osama or Saddam?" You and I both know the answer: We don't know these things because we had -- and have -- lousy human intelligence (HUMINT). Admitting this to the American people won't give away any secrets to our adversaries -- they already know it.
If we're to win this war, somebody well up in the hierarchy of this administration must confront this issue head-on -- and soon. Start by thanking George Tenant, the current CIA DIRECTOR, give him a gold watch and get him a professorship at Georgetown. Then hire a CIA director who can attract, train and field more Clandestine Service officers who will serve without diplomatic passports to recruit locals in Iraq to spy for us in the souks, madrassas and Islamic centers of the Middle East.
Then, go to the Congress and tell them they will have to promise never again to threaten prosecution for CIA officers who collect information from bad people. We're not going to penetrate Al Qaeda or Ansar Al-Islam with graduates of Mother Theresa's Home for Unwed Mothers.
You also ask, "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
Short answer: No. Herein lies the heart of the long-term problem -- and the key to the solution for the war in which we are now engaged. It's great that more people in Iraq have electricity today than before hostilities commenced on March 19. It's good that more shops, sewage treatment plants and water purification facilities are opening. But in the long term, it's even more important that schools are reopening. Schools that teach math and science and the abilities needed for modern life -- as alternatives to the madrassas -- are the long-term solution to the problems of Iraq, and the answer to terrorism.
Many, if not most, of the madrassas currently serving as recruiting stations and training centers for radical Islam are funded by the Saudis with our petro-dollars. Instead of teaching physics, math, biology, computer science or petro-chemical engineering, students in these "schools" are being taught little more than how to hate, kill themselves and kill infidels -- i.e., Americans, Christians or Jews.
Many of the "graduates" of these institutions have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the teachings of Sheik Hasan al-Bana, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. They then go on to join organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Ansar Al-Islam, Islamic Jihad and a host of other like-organizations because they have been taught that they must die the right way -- wrapped in a bomb jacket, sitting in an explosive-laden car or flying an airplane into a building full of Americans. As long as they die killing an infidel -- or those who support the infidels -- they will reap spiritual rewards in the next life -- and their families will derive financial benefits from "charity" for being related to a "martyr."
Stopping the Saudi money that finances these schools of hatred and the blood money paid to "martyrs'" families is important. But even more so are real schools with real teachers who will instruct the next generation -- not in how to die the right way, but in the skills needed to live the right way.