Dempsey & MacArthur.

This is coolbert:

From the DEBKAfile as of this last 30 August, this headline:

"Top US soldier: 'I don’t want to be complicit' if Israel attacks Iran"

"30 Aug. In its bluntest message yet, the US administration under Barack Obama, declared that Israel is on its own if it decides to go for Iran’s nuclear program with a military operation. Thursday, Aug. 30, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff . . . talking to journalists in London . . . Dempsey then astonished his audience by saying he did not know Iran's nuclear intentions, 'as intelligence did not reveal intentions.'”

Determining the INTENTIONS of your adversary most difficult. You know the foe has an army but what does he intend to DO with that army? You know the foe has a nuclear program but is that enrichment of uranium done with the goal of 25 % purity [reactor grade] or 95 % purity [weapons grade atomic bomb]?

AND does the Iranian merely intend to possess atomic weaponry OR DO THEY SEE A PLAUSIBLE SCENARIO FOR USE IN PRE-EMPTIVE UNILATERAL ACTION ON THEIR PART!!

Such are the questions the resolution of which must be accomplished by an intelligence agency using what Sun Tzu would have known as the INWARD SPY!.

From the comments of NKVD General Orlov, senior spymaster and defector to the west during the time of the Spanish Civil War. Thanks to the American CIA for the web site article:

"The Theory and Practice of Soviet Intelligence"

General Orlov commenting on the testimony of Douglas MacArthur [1951]:

"When General Douglas MacArthur, who had been blamed for not having foreseen certain developments in the Korean War, was asked by the Senate investigating committee in 1951 to explain why the North Korean invasion caught the Americans by surprise, he gave a classic reply from which many an intelligence chief could take his cue. He said":

"I don't see how it would have been humanly possible for any man or group of men to predict such an attack as that ... There is nothing, no means or methods, except the accidental spy methods - if you can get somebody to betray the enemy's highest circles, that can get such information as that. It is guarded with a secrecy that you cannot overestimate."

[NOT ONLY the North Korean invasion of South Korea but also the Chinese Communist intervention was unanticipated and unexpected when it did occur to be so ferocious and massive! Twice within a sixth month period MacArthur and his staff flummoxed and indeed the entire American intelligence community caught napping and big time and ended up with a lot of egg on their face. And this from persons such as MacArthur and his staff who can hardly be deemed novices or amateur, the tyro without experience this these men were NOT!!]

Again from Orlov:

Thus, under the fire of the investigation, General MacArthur, who was not an expert in intelligence, arrived with excellent logic at an idea which touches the very heart of the intelligence problem. 'There is nothing, no means or methods, except ... spy methods ... that can get such information as that.'"

From "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu using the translation as commissioned by James Clavell:

"Having inward spies means making use of officials of the enemy. Worthy men who have been degraded from office, criminals who have undergone punishment,;also, favorite concubines who are greedy for gold; men who are aggrieved at being in subordinate positions, or who have been passed over in the distribution of posts, others who are anxious that their side should be defeated in order that they may have a chance of displaying their ability and talents, fickle turncoats who always want to have a foot in each boat. Officials of these several kinds should be secretly approached and bound to one's interests by the means of rich presents. In this way  you will be able to find out the state affairs in the enemy's country, ascertain the plans that being formed against, you and, moreover, disturb the harmony create a breach between the sovereign and his ministers."

THE INWARD SPY! All other means technological and otherwise the intelligence product of which is incomplete unless INTENTIONS CAN BE DETERMINED! And for this reason INWARD SPIES are needed and most desirable.

The appreciations of the inward spy totally understood and used by Sun  [2,500 B.C.] and Orlov [1930's] but that aspect of espionage NOT available to either Dempsey or MacArthur. So it seems!

coolbert.