Our Intelligence Community: massive data, mass confusion

TomDispatch presents a fascinating, troubling and infuriating overview of the Intelligence Community (IC) in the US.

[… T]he real story of American intelligence is simply growth and bureaucratic infighting. The Bush administration, supposedly made up of “conservatives” who loath (and once endlessly railed against) “big government,” have ensured that, like the Pentagon, the IC, already an entangled monstrosity when they arrived, would experience its greatest growth spurt in memory, becoming an ever more bloated example of hopeless big government.

[snip]

Even if all its competing parts really did add up to a “community” — rather than a group of warring, bureaucratic mini-states on a collective proliferation mission — what kind of “intelligence” could possibly come out of such a conglomerate entity?

[snip]