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Monday, February 06, 2006
hmmm... watched "y intelligence fails" on discovery channel over the weekend... haha and i realised it had something to do with what i had written previously... the docu essentially presented 3 case studies of how sophisticated intelligence networks could easily break down...

the main reason for each individual country to develop its own intelligence agency is of course for a sense of secruity... if u noe what ur neighbours/allies/enemeies are up to... u would be in a better position to make informed decisions... knowledge is power and more importantly... current information is crutial to one's survival...

now the three case studies were the egyptian attack on isreal... the japanese invasion of singapore and of course the 911 terroist attacks... all three scenarios which occured decades apart... were the result of almost identical circumstances... firstly... the countries who were the victims were before the attacks... were the ones who were the undisputed superior in terms of military might... the isrealis had just expanded its territory into egypt by 3 times in just 6 days pervious... the british colony of singapore... was considered to be the mightiest fort in south east asia... and the united states... but one thing they also had in common was their belief that they were invulnerable to any offensive measures from the opposition...

so what really went wrong... in isreal... top officials recieved information about possible strikes by the egyptians long before the first round was fired... egyptians were trying to procure arms from the soviet union... the soviet union started evacuating its diplomats a few days before the scheduled assault... even the king of jordan... flew in secret to isreal to inform them of the impending invasion... so it was not impossible for them not to see that an attack was imminent...

in singapore... battle analysts gave updated talks on japanese strategies to british officers in singapore... japanese reconaissance troops were discovered scouting a possible landing site... and in the states... the terrorists had already been on the suspect list from 2 years ago and had been closely monitored...

so the information was there... they had the most up to date information possible... but still... everything went wrong... y? because of blind faith in superiority... the isrealis did not believe the egyptians could even contest a battle with them for they had air superiority... the british generals in singapore scoffed at remakes made by the battle analysts about the esprit de corps training as well as efficiency of the japanese troops... the bush administration had previously not place terrorism as one of its main priorities... all these made the information useless... white elephants...

its is true that hind sight is always 20/20... and yes we should learn from these lessons... as aptly put... surpise is the weapon of the weak against the strong... regardless of the situation... even in our daily lives... we should not close our minds to the endless possibilities in front of us... change is omnipresent... its the only constant in life... so we cannot get too comfortable with wat we have now... likewise... information is only good if acted upon... words in one ear and out the other are worthless regardless of the price it was bought at... so let us try to take away 2 things... to never be complacent no matter how successful one is... and to never treat any piece of information that comes ur way like scrap paper...

haha ciao...

{4:05 PM}

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