Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan

TL;DR — A serving general’s public indictment of his own intelligence apparatus — it was answering the wrong question.

January 2010, published by the Center for a New American Security while all three authors were serving — Major General Flynn (USA), Captain Pottinger (USMC), and Batchelor (DIA).

The charge: after eight years, US intelligence in Afghanistan remained focused on enemy targeting while knowing almost nothing about the population, the economy, local power structures or how districts actually governed themselves — the things a counterinsurgency campaign runs on.

Extraordinary as an institutional act. A serving flag officer published a detailed public critique of the organisation he was about to lead, under his own name, arguing his analysts were being used to answer a question that did not matter.

Where this came from

• Brendan Sheehan’s public are.na channel

28 pages. A copy is archived locally against link rot; the header links the original source.