On Slow Burn

So-called intelligence agencies once again failed miserably in assessing the anger on the Arab street. The Central Intelligence Agency duplicated its failures as it missed the coming attack on America on September 11, 2001, as it failed to notice Pakistan constructing nuclear weapons, and as it failed to recognize Iran's growing influence over Lebanon and Hamas when American actions might still have been able to contain it. But blame is not reserved for the CIA alone but all Western intelligence agencies, and even the dreaded state security apparatus of the various Middle Eastern states themselves that obviously did not apprehend that their own people were ready to rampage. Only now does US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledge Iran has fingerprints all over the street chaos in Bahrain and Yemen. But for some reason, Secretary Clinton demands that the US continue to provide one hundred million dollars in military aid to Lebanon- a nation that has fallen wholly under the thrall of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Who knows what will come next beyond the increasing possibility of a regional war being directed against Israel after some provocation most likely from Hamas but perhaps from Lebanese Hizbollah? The world's vaunted spy services certainly do not know and have failed completely in their predictions.