>Choosing which intelligence to accept or ignore, especially when the information is limited, is always a problem. In this case the administration had adopted the 1% thresh hold - i.e. if there was *any* chance of a threat, react as if the threat was certain, the idea being if you are going to be wrong, it is better to be wrong one way than another.
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>But I completely agree that extensive intelligence is the best way to prevent conflict and other nasty surprises.

Just like Hrushchov (*) said to JFK: "Wouldn't it be cheaper if we told each other everything? I'm paying my agents and your agents, you're paying your agents and my agents... while we could just cut out the middlemen." (offhead quote).

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(*) I can take a lot of mispronunciation, even with my last name... but this case is becoming ridiculous. Just the other day I heard Joe Biden pronounce it as "kroos-chev". First, it's not a kay, it's an aitch. When the Russian official spelling has a kh, it's h as in "his", never a kay. They have a k for that. Second, it's not borsht, it's borshch - sh, ch, as in "newschannel" (yep, they pronounce it as noosh channel). Last, forgivable, is that the accented e like that is pronounced like yo - o would be good. So Hruschchov, Gorbachov, despite the spelling. Russian grammar says there should be an umlaut on the e in such cases, but nobody does it. It's there only while you learn the language; in real life you just won't see it.