On the Usefulness of Intelligence

[osprey4]

Sir John Keegan presents an historical perspective to the current debate on intelligence failures.

The usefulness of military intelligence has a very mixed history. I say that with confidence, having recently published a long study, Intelligence In War, which set out to answer the question: how useful is intelligence? ... The studies yielded very varied conclusions. Among the most striking were that even the possession of perfect intelligence may not avert defeat.

[Theophylact]

And Matthew Wall points out that we've been led into war (or acts of war) by faulty intelligence many times before.