Thus we are witnessing the writing of anther chapter in the sad “March of Follies”-like saga of out-of-synchronization intercultural negotiations, particularly in the Middle East context. In this installment, Western-oriented experts, along with their Western-oriented political masters, insist on foisting their understanding, philosophy and process on an unwilling, unable and otherwise accustomed Middle Easterners. It will just not work.

The history and practice of dispute resolution in the Middle East points bluntly at indirect negotiations, through the auspices of a powerful intervener, as the most potentially successful path to actual, durable agreement. President Jimmy Carter played that role when he mediated/arbitrated between Egyptians and Israelis, and President Barak Obama is in a position to do the same, but will apparently decline history’s invitation.

Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas has been pleading for indirect talks under US and possible European guidance. He knows what he wants and needs. For disputants in the Middle East to meet directly, without the intervention of a formidable mediator/arbitrator intervener, is almost unheard of (the sole exception is the Israeli-Jordanian agreement). The strong side will never find itself under any significant pressure to give ground, and the weak party will never be able to concede anything, even if it wants to, while being able to tell its constituency later: “The intervener made us do it.” And no party will be able to get their narrative reframed and moderated if necessary by the interveners.

Moreover, direct negotiations remove the ability of both parties to maintain their honor (a supremely important component in Middle East context) while actually making concessions and progress. Israelis are almost genetically incapable of dealing with Palestinians at eye-level. Palestinians are equally unable and unwilling to accommodate what they perceive as patronizing Israeli attitudes and postures. Since there is no place for salvaged honor in this landscape, there will most likely be no deal.

The power equation in the Middle East is not encouraging from a local dispute resolution perspective. Both parties see themselves as victims, a major obstacle to Middle East-style reconciliation which requires one party to assume at least some culpability (though not guilt). While the Palestinians see America as Israel’s protector, they also understand that only America can make Israel (and the Palestinians) make the concessions required to reach a settlement. The Israelis, amazingly enough, are in perfect agreement with the Palestinians on this point, hence their reluctance to allow the Americans to remain in the game when the going gets tough.

It is not too late for America to come to its senses and insist on indirect negotiations, under its leadership (and when needed, coaxing, even coercion). This is the only negotiations format that has a chance to succeed. It is not too late for Israel to accept the realities of dispute resolution in the Middle East and agree, even encourage indirect negotiations. Unfortunately, such an epiphany is unlikely to take place, and we will all pay the price.

Israel, special in many ways (good and bad), is somewhat special in this department as well: the proportional part of the delusional segment in Israeli life is rather large and dominant - and growing like mad.

For example, most Israelis (including philosophers, Supreme Court Justices, and other allegedly educated and rational people) refer to their country as “Jewish-Democratic”. Now, that’s such an obvious oxymoron, that I feel it does not require explaining, but for the sake of those still struggling: a democracy is based on equality before the law and on equal rights. A Jewish state is founded on preferential treatment (legal and cultural) of a section of the country’s citizens based on their religious affiliation. Case closed. Anything beyond this is splitting hairs for the purpose of avoiding the need to deal with the realization that Israel is not a democracy. It is an ethnocracy with a reasonable number of democratic-like institutions, and a modicum of democracy-like behavior, particularly in areas that are well within the fairly broad (and almost exclusively Jewish) consensus.

Another delusional aspect of life in Israel has to do with the relations between the country’s military and its religious soldiers. The entire relationship between the army and many of its religious soldiers is rotten from the foundations because it is based on an “Hesder” (arrangement, in English). That means that religious soldiers arrived at an arrangement with the military, whereas they do not serve a full term of service like every soldier, but serve about half the regular period of an active service, and the rest of their service takes place in bible studying schools, where the brave soldiers “kill” themselves in “Madrasa” like environments, where they stuff themselves full of religious indoctrination. The “rotten” part of this arrangement is not the fact that the religious community negotiated it with the military, but with the fact that at the (very close) background of the negotiations rested a very thinly veiled threat that unless they (the so called “national” religious communities) get their deal, they would refuse to serve in the military altogether (as do tens of thousands of ultra orthodox Jews in Israel).

But that is only a minor part of the religio-military delusion. The major part has to do with the fact that most Israelis choose to ignore the fact that religious soldiers and their real leaders (rabbis) keep insisting at every opportunity that when biblical interpretations collide with military orders, bible takes precedence without questions. That effectively means that the interpreters of biblical dogma (rabbis) are the de-facto military commanders of the part of the Israeli army that includes religious soldiers (I forgot to mention that most of these soldiers serve in segregated units, where they don’t have to sully themselves by co-serving with “regular” Israelis).

Myths and national delusions sometimes (not too often) play a constructive roll in the life of a nation. In the case of Israel, the two delusions I pointed to, and several more, help maintain a sort of a tenuous “industrial peace”, because they help postpone serious discussion about the true nature of the country and the true nature of the military command structure, thus help postpone inevitable clashes between the country’s widely incompatible sectors (and that’s only within the country’s Jewish sector).

But when the maintenance of the delusions come at the cost of almost completely hiding the true nature of the situation from the very constituency that both created and is effected by the delusions, that is the time to bring these questions out for public debate, regardless of rational and/or irrational national fears. Of course, that’s a delusional assumption on my part: no way, no how will the Jewish citizens of Israel dare examine the more rational premises of their current condition. The results will be insufferable from their perspective; hence, the country is doomed to continue down an agenda-less, vision-less, and unfortunately brain-less path to a sad, though very real, end.

What do the Hamas want most? They want to present themselves to their constituencies as assertive, and most of all as successful in dealing with their arch enemy, the Israelis.

What do the Israelis want most? They want to deny Hamas a public relations (as well as a political) coup – an almost sure thing in the aftermath of a deal, with its mass victory parades, and emotion-filled reunions between released prisoners and their families. Another thing that Israelis are desperate to avoid is the wave of gloom and anger that they know will wash over their country in the face of Hamas’s victory celebrations.

The only way Israel could hope to mitigate a Hamas public relations coup is by either scuttling the deal (which many in Israel wish), or by creating a worthy diversion to Hamas’s victory parade. In order to do that Israel’s negotiators and its decision makers have to think creatively, something they appear to be almost genetically incapable of (for a long time now).

Israel’s first mistake is its instinctive resistance of Hamas’s demand for an exchange ratio of 1000:1. Instead of leveraging the demand into a public relation demonstration of Hamas’s apparent low opinion of its own people, to the extent that they think that a single Israeli is worth a thousand Palestinians, Israel is creating a bargaining situation that is irrelevant and cannot be won under any scenario. So what if Israel manages to keep two or three prisoners in prison? So what if they manage to have a few prisoners exiled to Gaza or to Ireland? How would that mitigate Hamas’s victory? It would not.

But if Israeli negotiators had the guts, the imagination and the ability to think creatively, they would have dealt with the situation differently from the start.

The best way to mitigate a Hamas victory is to create another, competing and compelling, winner in the same arena. Such a winner can be the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Israel had a chance to strengthen Abbas’s position, get rid of some of the thousands of prisoners it keeps in its prisons, and throw cold water over Hamas’s victory, by starting a gradual, continuous, release of Palestinian prisoners to the West Bank, to the hands of Abbas’s officials. Such a release, say 50 prisoners every week, over a long period (years now), would have created a situation where prisoners releases are a routine; the population and the media are inured to the spectacle, Abbas’s administration is collecting the good will of its constituency, and Hamas is gradually being pushed to the shadows of the vaunted prisoners release process. Even if Hamas does get to bring home a few hundred prisoners to seal the deal with Israel, that would not play the same exclusive tune after a long period of prisoners release to the West Bank.

If they wanted to be even more creative, Israeli negotiators could have told Hamas: “Why only a thousand? You are right, one of our soldiers is worth thousands of yours; we’ll give you two thousands.”

But these are all idle thoughts. Israeli negotiators will not become nimble thinkers. Israeli decision makers, mostly ex generals and other “accomplished” negotiators and dispute resolution pros, will never learn how to do anything but jockey for position, gritting their teeth and searching for a place to unleash some violence. A pity for all of us.

So far so good, Israel ’s Foreign Minister is a decisive and deeply perceptive man, and when a senior European envoy meets with a representative of what Israel considers a terror organization, decisive men in Israel become worried and ask perceptive questions.

Than came the sub headline. It read: “The Prime Minister told Solana that there is a need to separate between moderates and extremist in the Middle East , and that such a meeting hurts such an effort.”

I was on the floor, convulsing with an uncontrolled laughter. Lieberman, an extremist if there ever was one, basically the highest placed hoodlum in Israel ’s government (along with some other distinguished hoodlums), is lecturing Solana about the need to separate extremists from moderates in the Middle East . Lieberman, a man whose idea of a moderate posture is to propose to bomb the Aswan Dam in Egypt , and expel a few hundred thousands of Israel ’s Arab citizens, should know what he is talking about. Solana should have heeded Lieberman’s advice, and left the meeting with Lieberman right then and there.

Well, while it may not be constructive, the neckless hoodlum/politicians of Israel’s current government at least give us cause for a healthy laughter from time to time – no small feat in these days of serious challenges to credulity and optimism. Thank you Lieberman! Keep up the good work!

American car manufacturers (and many other vendors as well) complain long and bitter about the added cost of health care, slapped on top of the base price of each of the vehicles they roll off their assembly lines. This is because of the employee-based, private health insurance structure in the US - as opposed, for example to Japanese cars, whose cost structure does not include a penny in health insurance costs, making them more price-competitive (in addition to their other advantages). That’s because the Japanese (as well as the French, Italian, German, British…. Governments) provide their citizens (including car industry employees) with a universal health care.

Want more data? A 2001 study by the Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured (ERIU), at the University of Michigan, titled: “Health Insurance, Labor Supply, and Job Mobility: A Critical Review of the Literature”, reviewed 50 relevant studies on the subject and concluded that “…while there is some division in the literature, the most convincing evidence suggests that health insurance plays an important role in job mobility decisions. Our general conclusion is that health insurance has important effects on both labor force participation and job choice…”

Another research study, published in 2003, this time by Anna Sanz de Galdeano, from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, concluded that “… after accounting for unobserved individual heterogeneity, holding EPHI (Employer-provided health insurance) induces substantial mobility reductions for all demographic groups, ranging from 35% to 60%.

If the data included in these studies, is even remotely correct, it appears that the freedom associated with knowing you will receive health care no matter where and when you work is a liberating boost for other economies, and a debilitating handicap on the American economy. Looking at the healthcare statistics in most European “Socialist” hells teaches us, further, that people in industrialized countries “afflicted” with universal healthcare systems, are generally healthier than their American counterparts, live longer and enjoy a less stressful life. Indeed, a scary prospect.

So why is there such a wide-spread fear amongst the American public from anything that has to do with universal healthcare? It is easy to dismiss this objection as ignorance, or to attach it to the vigorous pushback by the “fair and balanced” coalition headed by the American health insurance industry and Fox News. Indeed, hearing it on Fox, universal healthcare is the first step in a vast conspiracy to enslave all Americans through the horrors of universal healthcare – stifling America’s entrepreneurial spirit in endless lines, in drab, numbing mass clinics.

I think that American’s objections has more to do with the fiercely independent self perception of many in this country. Anything that appears to compromise this perceived independence is frowned at.

Interestingly enough, when it comes to defense, Americans seem to be willing to abdicate much of this fierce independence to the federal government. It’s as if the perception is that the government knows best when it comes to keeping us either dead or alive, but keeping us healthy is too much to ask.

This may be the right place to share with you a sad secret: America already has socialized medicine. About 49% of every healthcare dollar spent in America today comes out of the public purse, in the form of Medicare, and other state and federal healthcare schemes. The only difference is that while the demand side is universal, the supply side is still at the hands of the same greedy bastards that gave us the latest economic disaster. Scaring Americans by telling them that reducing the cost of medicines will sap the funding out of R&D is bull. Pharmas spend very little of their overall budget on R&D (about 15% on the average), and they will just have to be less greedy and more true to their high flying narratives.

The solution, in my opinion, should be that of a combined universal and private healthcare system. The universal part will provide every American citizen with a cradle to grave health basket. Those wanting to provide themselves and their families with extras, will be able to purchase additional health insurance, giving them access to possibly better, faster, more expanded health services. This way, America’s sense of individualism will remain intact, while the health of its citizens will improve immeasurably (currently about 50 million people are without health insurance at all, and many more millions have inadequate coverage). America should join the family of nations that provide its citizens with more expanded universal service beyond capital punishment.

I know that it sounds harsh, and I know that on the face of it the country appears to have all the artifacts of a working, functioning democracy. But those of us who have been watching the establishing, running and execution style of the current government will have to admit that the signs of ungovernability are all over, and they are difficult to ignore.

The first signs of a systemic problem showed up a while back, when Netanyahu was assembling his government. Essentially, the process, which is always chaotic and full of emotions, appeared on the surface to be organized, even calm (in as much as you can use this term in a Middle East context). But the truth is that the process was anything but organized and calm; in reality, the process included Netanyahu accepting the near-blackmail terms of every potential coalition member, resulting in the construction of a monstrous government, the largest in Israeli history, including six (6) ministers without portfolio, and without (I repeat, without) a minister of health. Anybody with eyes in her/his head should have known right then and there that this is a national joke, not a government; but denial is a national sport in Israel, and most observers managed to close their eyes to this signal as well.

Then came the fantastically delusional period where Israeli politicians managed to pretend (and convince the country) that nothing changed in the relations between the US and its client state. Since most people here view George W. Bush as Israel ’s biggest fan and friend (despite the fact that he brought Iran to where it is now), a continuation of the status quo was seen as a good thing here. That was despite persistent signs from Washington that things are changing, that Israel’s little sly games of lying to the world and to America about the settlements, and continuing to do whatever it wants in the West Bank, will not go unnoticed, uncommented and without response any more.

Netanyahu flew to Washington , had the riot act read to him personally by President Obama, and still did not internalize anything. His (Netanyahu’s) spokespersons and spin doctors (he has a whole hospital of them, despite having no Minister of Health) told us that America loves Israel, that America understands Israel, and the America will not get upset when Israel continues to spit in its foreign policy face. Israeli President, Mr. Peres, cruised the world’s capitals telling everybody that Netanyahu is actually a peace dove, in a hawk’s camouflage, and that any minute now we’ll see him launching himself and his country on a sure course of reconciliation. How endearing (and delusional).

But this time America refuses to buy Israel ’s clichés, platitudes and lies. Gradually, and consistently, America keeps telling Israel to wake up and face the music. Still, reality has not been sinking in. So Israeli politicians decided to throw Uncle Sam a bon, remove a few “illegal outpost” (what’s the difference between them and legal outposts?). Well, they have been trying for the last two weeks. I say trying, because that’s what it boils down to – mostly unsuccessful attempts to demonstrate control, highlighted by the fact that each “removed” post gets reconstructed and re-established within days, sometimes hours after its “removal”. Not only that, settlers are embarking on a policy of retaliation against Palestinians, the Israeli army and Israeli police, in an attempt to demonstrate the “price tag” that each attempt to change the status quo ante carries with it.

And all this, before the real show even started. The inability of the Israel ’s government to impose its authority on its settlers constituency is the beginning of a new reality show that is going to visit the Middle East and the rest of the world. Before long, the delusional talk about a “two state solution” will meet the reality of two elements: the inability to revise the situation in the West Bank , and the fact that what we have here is a theological conflict. Once the world’s and the region’s politicians internalize these facts (and a few essential others), there will be a chance for a realistic thinking and acting toward some solution in the Middle East . Unfortunately, as we know, this awakening usually comes in the aftermath of a huge bloodbath. That one’s apparently coming too.

The United States is going through a conflict resolution phase. National energies, along with the agendas of policy making and executive instruments of state, are focusing on trying to find other-than-military solutions to a host of problems around the world. President Obama is opting for leveraging of “soft power” as opposed to “hard power”. The general orientation is in the direction of conciliation rather than escalation, dialogue in preference of belligerency. Hope is in the air.

Israel , on the other hand is locked into a combined cycle of self denial and fear. The entire country is experiencing an ever-deepening anxiety attack about Iran ’s future nuclear capabilities – an anxiety attack that leads inevitably towards an armed conflagration, the results of which are difficult to overestimate. A friend of mine, a politically centralist professor at an Israeli university told me recently: “ Israel is going from Masada through the Holocaust to another Masada .” Since Masada is the ultimate metaphor for national suicide (literal, not figurative), the reference is more than chilling.

Nothing, but nothing at all figures on the Israeli horizon except a determination to do everything in its power arrest Iran ’s march toward nuclear capability. There is no serious dialogue about the alleged threat and none about potential ways to deal with it. No dissenting squeak is allowed to mar the iron-clad consensus. The country is marching toward a military conflict with Iran with a lemming-like determination. Despair is in the air.

This uni-dimensional focus allows Israel to conveniently ignore the closing of the window of opportunity for the “two state solution”. Israeli leaders, and worse than that, Israeli public, have decoupled completely the conflict with Iran from the overall conflict in the Middle East . Of course, no viable alternative to “two states solution” is proffered for discussion in the public sphere in Israel ; amazingly enough, none is demanded/asked for.

Since Iran is using the Middle East conflict as both fuel and camouflage to its larger hegemonic designs (which are not necessarily a threat to Israel), relieving the pressure generated by this conflict will remove much of the energy that feeds the Iranian strategy machine in the region.

The combination of a military conflict with Iran, coupled with continued Israeli occupation of millions of Palestinians, expansion of settlements, increased messianic propensities in the Israeli military and at the highest government echelons, juxtaposed with a super-severe economic crisis (Israel’s exports declined recently by 40% compared to similar period last year), point to a future of incredible agony and loss for the county, the region and the entire world.

Israeli policy makers are building on a “common past” when they assume that America will accompany Israel on its death-wish march. Hopefully, America ’s sights are aimed elsewhere, into a future that includes more talking and less killing. This is where Israeli and American paths diverge; the two countries progressively share less of a common future. America should make this divergence clear to Israel ; it may be the only thing that will cause Israelis to pause and think about what they are doing to themselves and to the world.

The “good cop – bad cop” routine that the Israelis are playing is designed to convince the world (and itself) that Israel “wants”, “strives”, “seeks”, “dreams”, “aspires to” and “yearns for” peace, while at the same time making sure that no practical, constructive, or realistic steps ever take place towards achieving that goal. This posture reflects the deeply arrogant position that sees the world as a bunch of irrelevant and unrealistic cowards, with zero understanding of real-politics. It also reflects the almost nation-wide acceptance of the “there is no partner for peace” paradigm that the Israelis have adopted en mass over the last 15 years.

In reality, the Israeli approach reflects a deep delusional perception about themselves, Europe, America and the world. Israelis despise Europeans for their “cowardice”, while at the same time yearn to become part of Europe . Israelis mock Americans for their “naiveté” believe that Europe and America (and the rest of the world) are, and will forever be, in Israel ’s corner, because “they are like us”. Israel, despite its history, geographic and demographic realities, insists on associating itself with “The West”, since such a state of mind allows it to avoid having to deal with the “real” realities of its location in the world, and the attitude of most of the world (particularly the West) towards it.

So the show is on; the “good” cop is Israeli President Shimon Peres. This “elder statesman” (a euphemism for someone who refuses to just go away), is telling Americans and the world (Israelis have stopped listening to him a long time ago), that everything is going to be just fine: Netanyahu “understands history, and wants to get into history” and consequently will “do what is necessary” to promote a peace agreement with the Palestinians/Syrians/The Arab World (choose the most desirable). This worthy goal will, of course, be achieved without allowing for a Palestinian State , without withdrawing from the Golan Heights , and without even acknowledging the Arab peace proposal.

The “bad” cop is Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman. He (a former club bouncer), plays the hoodlum from memory, with passion and quite a lot of natural talent. Recently, Lieberman graced several European capitals with his neck-less self, explaining to mostly gaping counterparts that “Nothing has come from this whole ‘peace industry’ except for conferences in five-star hotels and a waste of money.” It appears that the mere concept of reconciliation causes some deep offense to Lieberman’s worldview. After all, why waste time and money on despicable peace efforts, when you can have a good war every two years; it’s good for business; it’s good for fascism; it’s good for hatered. A real win-win. But Lieberman does not want to spoil the fun for Netanyahu; he (Lieberman) told Israeli papers recently that: “we are going to lie low before the Netanyahu-Obama meeting.” That basically means that they (the Israeli government) will pretend, even force itself on occasion to mouth clichés, platitudes and pure lies about its geo-political intentions (e.g., Netanyahu: “I am willing to resume peace negotiations with the Palestinians immediately, without pre-conditions”.)

Nobody in Israel even bothers to responds to these utterances. Everybody knows that they mean less than nothing, and that this Israeli government has only one goal: to get the world to force Iran to disown its nuclear ambitions. Nothing else is on the radar screen, and nothing will happen on any front as long as this issue is on the table.

Furthermore, Israelis do not see any linkage between the Iranian issue and other Middle East conflicts; they refuse to acknowledge that the Iranians are using the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to leverage themselves into the Middle East through Hamas and Hizbollah; they (Israelis) refuse to acknowledge that solving the Syrian-Israeli and/or Palestinian-Israeli conflict will make the job that much harder for the Iranians. So Israel will continue its good cop - bad cope charade, and the world is going to either tell her to stop or pay dearly.

With respect to Iran, Israel’s policy is clear and focused: Iran is viewed by many in Netanyahu’s government as an existential threat, which therefore requires (in their opinion) the focus of the world. The world, according to Netanyahu, should set a strict, observable timetable for discussion with Iran, move on to a universally agreed set of tough sanctions, and if discussions and sanctions fail, press on to a military action that will neutralize Iran’s nuclear ambitions, preferably by the U.S., but possibly by Israel.

Netanyahu’s policy with respect to a two-state solution (Israel-Palestine) is also known: He rejects it. The rejection may be coated with a sweet powder of patronizing platitudes, clichés and even some constructive-looking moves, but the core is unchanged: No Palestinian state next to Israel; at least not while there’s a chance for such a move to actually materialize.

Netanyahu’s government position with respect to a possible peace deal with Syria is also known: it will accept only a “Peace-for-Peace” formulation. But at this stage of the game, anything short of a full Israeli withdrawal from the annexed Golan Heights is a non-starter; the questions left to discuss are only timing, format and payback.

Israeli officials tell everybody that the government is working on a new policy, and they ask for time to formulate and frame a coherent policy. While normally, this is a quite reasonable request, in the current context, it is nothing but a sad joke. Here, Israeli officials are gearing up for a global-size con job. They are not working on a coherent policy, but on a fuzzy, incoherent, list of presentations, whose sole purpose is to stonewall, and buy time, while everybody does what Israel wants: focus on Iran.

America, and the rest of the world, should be unhappy about the dish that Israeli cooks are preparing for it. In the first place, it is clear that lack of movement on the Palestinian front feeds the Iranian’s overall hegemonic strategy, not only with respect to Israel but, more importantly, with respect to major Arab countries in the region (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon). Furthermore, it is quite clear that the window of opportunity for a “two state solution” is closing rapidly. Israeli strategists do not have a single constructive idea for a “Post two state solution” Middle East . They just do not want to think about it. They prefer to focus everything on Iran , and the rest be damned.

The Middle East, and the rest of the world will pay a dear price if it lets Israel divert attention from the need to decouple Israel and Palestine. It is quite unclear that this is a doable task at this point; what is abundantly clear is that in two or four year time, with Israeli continuing settlement activity, and with Palestinian despair, the task will be as close to impossible as can be. So while we all blame it on Iran, somebody should also pay attention to Israel.

In the context of terror suspects interrogations, Mr. Soufan writes: “One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the CIA and FBI, similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An FBI colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed than anyone in government was not allowed to speak to him.”

It is worth re-reading the paragraph above because one may not believe one’s eyes after a single reading. If this is true, the executives responsible for these policies, both at the CIA and the FBI should be fired immediately and it is worth examining if their actions directly harmed the national security of the United States , in which case they may even be “eligible” to face criminal proceedings.

Another item in Mr. Soufan’s article that merits a much closer look is the role of contractors in the most sensitive areas. Mr. Soufan writes: “It’s worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not CIA officers, who requested the use of these techniques (torture - DP)”.

Between 40% and 70% of America ’s intelligence work is currently done by outside contractors (figures vary depending on source). In essence, though, regardless of the exact numbers, it is clear to all observers that the CIA and other intelligence agencies have undergone a practical process of privatization in recent years, and that farming intelligence at all levels to mercenaries is not in the best interests of the organizations or their clients (the American people), for many reasons, including cost and the fact that outside contractors are not beholden to the organizations’ strict rules, regulations, codes and enforcement tools.

Both the “Chinese wall” and the privatization of America ’s intelligence apparatus are but two demonstrations of the existential dissonance that accompanies the word “intelligence” these days. Apparently, intelligence means a lot of things, but it does not mean Intelligent. We all pay a dear price for these incongruities.