The Pentagon inspector general is now conducting an inquiry into those editorial changes, which masked the magnitude of the American military’s failures in training Iraqi troops and in beating back ISIS. Those supervisors were “particularly eager to paint a more optimistic picture of America’s role in the conflict than was warranted.”
So that, in a very real way, the combination of the US military desire to keep up the fiction of a well trained Iraqi army defending itself, together with the European fiction of maintaining open borders even as hordes of unknown people were coming in from the world’s most explosive region, may have led to the Paris attacks of Nov. 13.
Frank Wuco, a retired naval intelligence officer and United States Central Command (CENTCOM) analyst, is highly critical of those editorial changes in intelligence reports. “You’re never ever to report information that supports a certain political thesis or political line. It defies the professional together,” he said in a radio interview this weekend.
US Air Force Col. Pat Ryder commented on the upcoming Congressional investigation of these apparent failures: “Gen. Austin and Central Command are taking these allegations very seriously. … Austin counts on the more than 1,200 exceptional intelligence professionals who support CENTCOM’s mission to provide him and the command with unvarnished intelligence and key insights into the myriad issues we face every day.”