Pessimism in the Intelligence Community

By Douglas Farah

The overwhelmingly negative assessment of the U.S. counter-terrorism strategy laid out by John Negroponte and other leaders of the intelligence community in the annual worldwide threat assessment was surprisingly under-reported.

But buried in the bleak assessment, one of the starkest in recent reports, was a realistic outline of the spreading threats on multiple Islamist fronts that we are facing.

The report was notable for its candor and the end to the happy talk that has often made its way into assessments on the struggle against the _jihadist_ threat. What is amazing is that, five years and billions of dollars after 9-11, we are falling behind in the conflict. We are not even really competing in the field of ideas, and we have done little to mitigate the broader problems.

Part of the problem is that there is still no general consensus on who the enemy is and if a war exists. Until we decide that, little else of import can happen.

The enemy is the ideology and theology that is still be funded by billions of dollars a year to spread its poison. There are two different poisons-the Salafist-Sunni version funded by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and the Shia poison funded by Iran. Both are aimed at killing us before they turn on each other. My full blog is here.

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