This Is No Way To Run Intelligence

The news over the past week:

The mad al Qaeda muzzies are planning an imminent strike. That is important. We all need to know that.

Their most likely targets will be our embassies. Important. Need to know.

Their method of attack may well be by a suicide bomber with explosives surgically implanted in their body. Important. Need to know.

Then there was this from McClatchey on 4 Aug.:

An official who’d been briefed on the matter in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, told McClatchy that the embassy closings and travel advisory were the result of an intercepted communication between Nasir al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, and al Qaida leader Ayman al Zawahiri in which Zawahiri gave “clear orders” to al-Wuhaysi, who was recently named al Qaida’s general manager, to carry out an attack.

Why do we need to know that? What does it do to change or add anything to what we need to know and have already been told?

What does that information do other than burn an intelligence source? Whatever means of communication these two animals were using - and evidently it was an electronic means that the NSA could tap - they will now no longer use. And what that means is that, while we might put the kabosh on this particular planned attack with our response, we won't be stopping the next one that we don't know about til the bombs go off.

This is hardly the first intelligence source our news media and / or the Obama Administration has burned. Sources and methods should be sacrosanct. This is just insane.

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