Word: pentagonals
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...would be justified in asking itself, What will stop Blair from taking another key station - Baghdad, for instance? Blair is a Navy officer, and the suspicion is that his grab for Kabul has something to do with a plan for the Pentagon to assume the CIA's authority. What's more, it's not as if Blair's argument is without merit. We are in the middle of two inconclusive wars, and the Pentagon needs good, detailed tactical intelligence on these two countries, so why shouldn't Blair cater to the Pentagon's needs, possibly even appoint a uniformed military...
...order to really understand the CIA's angst, you have to remember that the Pentagon already takes more than 80% of the intelligence budget. It runs the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency and is in charge of satellites. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon dwarfs the CIA in terms of people and money it has for spying. Which leaves the CIA with stations like Kabul serving as small but important citadels of independent civilian intelligence. (Read "The CIA's Silent War in Pakistan...
...authority to send back to Washington and disseminate around the government what is essentially finished analysis. This happened in Iraq in mid-2003, when the CIA station in Baghdad sounded the alarm that the invasion was about to go very badly. When the White House and the Pentagon's civilian management read the Baghdad chief's conclusions, they raged, dismissing the analysis as "defeatist," even going so far as to accuse the chief of being a closet Democrat. The chief came home, but that did not stop his successors, CIA officers from the ranks, from sending in similar bad news...
...that the use of roadside bombs is up 80% so far this year, making them the primary killer of U.S. and international troops. In 2008, 172 troops died from a record 3,276 IEDs, a 45% jump from the year before, according to the Joint IED Defeat Organization, a Pentagon agency. This trend is expected to worsen in the months ahead, as thousands of incoming U.S. reinforcements push into areas where the Taliban has operated unchallenged. (See pictures of Afghanistan's deadly Korengal valley...
...same time, Task Force Paladin, a counter-IED unit created by the Pentagon, deploys bomb specialists who monitor and defuse roadway threats downrange. Its arsenal includes radio jammers to neutralize remote-controlled devices, as well as radars that can locate mines beneath the surface. According to TF Paladin's commander, Colonel Jeffrey Jarkowsky, such improvements have reduced IED effectiveness in terms of casualties 20% over the past year...