Top Pentagon intelligence officials are scrambling to cover their brass on Tuesday, after a ranking general over the European theater admitted there just might be a “gap in U.S. intelligence gathering.” Somehow, our spooks relied on the same bogus rumors that the Kremlin did. The ones that said Russia would blitzkrieg the border with so much shock and awe the amateur “Nazi” Ukrainian forces would instantly surrender. They were wrong all the way around.
Panic at the Pentagon
They say the war room at the Pentagon is looking more like a scene from “Dr. Strangelove” every day. One of those Cuban Missile Crisis hushes has come over the conference table. Leaks through the cracks indicate that Vlad Putin has hunkered with his family and all the favored officials in the doomsday bunker and he’s carrying the big red button around on a chain.
It doesn’t help for Joe Biden to blab the assassination plans on global television, but well, they’re stuck with that now. Jen Psaki and the spin doctors are doing their best to diffuse it. Meanwhile, Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, grudgingly acknowledges that official “intelligence assessments before the invasion” were based on a number of factors, including that the Ukrainians were “not as ready as I thought they should be.” He’s the one who “questioned their will to fight.”
Last month, nobody in the Pentagon was surprised when the Russian military exercises turned into the invasion of Ukraine everyone was expecting. The entire alphabet of our spooky spy agencies agreed “that the country-wide assault could lead to Kyiv falling into Russian hands within days.”
It didn’t come close to happening that easy. Latest word is that Vlad gave up on taking the capitol and is working to retreat gracefully while holding as much of the territory he captured as he can secure.
On Tuesday, March 29, European Command chief General Tod Wolters was on the hot seat at the Senate Armed Services Committee.
He replied to conservative Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker that yes, “there could be” an “intelligence gap that caused the U.S. to overestimate Russia’s strength and underestimate the Ukrainian defenses.” He didn’t come right out and say the Pentagon blew it but that’s what everyone is hearing.
Clean it up later
Well, these things happen, the general smiled, giving his best George C. Scott impersonation. Just leave it to the Pentagon experts. They will clean it up later. If there is a later. “As we’ve always done in the past, when this crisis is over with, we will accomplish a comprehensive after-action review in all domains and in all departments and find out where our weak areas were and make sure we can find ways to improve, and this could be one of those areas.”
It reminds Americans, at least the ones of the right age to remember the Kubric classic, of the scene where the General called his lover and told her not to wait up for him, just go back to bed and “be sure to say your prayers.”
American spies got the part about an inevitable invasion right. Joe Biden’s New World Order handlers were sure to push him into leaking the reports “aggressively” in an attempt to “turn global sentiment against the Kremlin.”
What the Pentagon had no clue about was how badly prepared the Russians were, despite all that “training” they were doing ahead of time. Our “intelligence community did not assess the poor performance of the Russian military.” If they missed that, how can we trust all their other assessments?
The Pentagon admits they now have “anecdotal evidence of morale problems in the Russian military.” Things like reports of a commander being run over by his own tanks after a particularly bloody loss and more reports of Russian forces shooting their squad-mates for desertion or aiding the enemy.
Also on Tuesday, Russia announced the Kremlin started to “drastically reduce” the assaults on Kyiv and Chernihiv. That’s where the Ukrainians are dug in especially tight and the civilians are putting up a significant underground resistance.
