The United States Needs More Spies

We have heard it for years. It is just hard to get spies into countries like Iran or organizations like Al-Qaeda. It is hard to find native speakers of Farsi that we can trust. You might remember them saying, before we blundered into Iraq, that is was hard to spy on totalitarian regimes like Saddam Hussein's. During the cold war, we heard similar complaints about countries behind the Iron Curtain.

We need a President who will insist that we get those spies, hard or not.

There are ways to do it. They involve risk. But is the risk greater than the one we run without those spies? I think not. We must find out where Iran is in its quest for a nuclear bomb, for example. We can't afford to remain ignorant, yet does anyone trust that the CIA has a real, detailed knowledge of Iran's program? We failed to detect Muammar al-Gaddafi's program before he shut it down. We failed to detect Pakistan's program. We failed to predict the fall of the Soviet system.

If we fail again, we run two risks at least. First, we could be bombed with a nuclear device. Second, we could make preemptive war again, and unnecessarily, spending our soldier's lives when we do not have to.

Or, we could find out the facts, like just when they will acquire the capability. Knowing that, we can implement policies that avoid the two options above.

I fear, though, that soon we will hear the time worn statements from our government, the whine, the pontification-it is just too hard to get human spies into those places.

Doesn't history prove those claims false? Didn't the Soviet Union infiltrate our Manhattan Project? Of course it did. There is no reason that we cannot do it, too, to Iran, and, I might add, to the tribal areas in Pakistan where we speculate that Osama bin Laden is hiding.

The Ivy League boys in Washington, and the embassy, martini party spies in the CIA had better learn to rub elbows with some of our loyal, patriotic, American-Islamic types. They are the only ones who can help us to even get a start. There must be some within our shores. The desk types in Washington need also to find some disaffected Iranians, to buy them, to turn them, or to blackmail them into being ours. They had better do it soon, and they had better do it long term, not just in Iran, but in every Islamic hotspot on the globe.

Soon we might be at war again, this time with Iran. All of us should ask hard questions before we go that route. We should remember the flimsy evidence Colin Powell gave in front of the UN and demand, and keep demanding, better evidence.

Isn't learning how to spy better than losing one of our cities or losing more troops?