Bush's Political Capital = GOP refusal to vote on

[GG]

I wasn't bashing for the desire of a stronger CIA. I was bashing at the Republicants in Congress who wouldn't pass the recommendations of a bipartisan commission that did an excellent job in telling us where the weaknesses are. Bush publicly says he supports them. But he can't deliver, even when it's not going to take more money and his party controls our entire gov't!?

 

Nov. 3 was a severe overestimation of how much "political capital" he's got in his wallet. Which in some areas (not this one tho) is fine by me.

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My understanding is that the bill had a lot of unsettled issues on budget and lines of authority, and Pentagon was fighting it like mad. I'd rather have them fight out all the isuses before passing the bill, instead of rushing to pass something to meet the lame duck deadline and pass a half arsed law.

[Terry Tate]

Since the subject came up, I thought someone might be interested in what is involved in recruiting and training a DoD Arabic linguist.

 

1. Identify candidates by screening recruits based upon standard aptitude battery tests.

2. Further screen using the Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB). A short introduction of a foreign language - cold - followed by a written test, and a listening and comprehension test. Candidates who pass the test are allowed to select a language-based specialty.

3. Basic military training, time period varies between services. After graduating basic training, a specific target language is selected. If there is more than one language class beginning that still has open slots (usually the case as they try to group classes together), a candidate may have more than one language to choose from.

4. Candidates then attend an English language class for six weeks. Basic little brown book grammar instruction, to cut down on the amount of time spent during target language instruction on basics. (note - I don't believe this is done anymore, but was test case done years ago and dropped.)

5. Basic Language training at the Defense Language Institute, Foreign Language Center (DLI/FLC), Presidio of Monterey, California. Students attend language training Monday through Friday, eight hours a day for the duration of the course. The course length is determined by the language difficulty. The longest courses - Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Arabic are 47 week courses. After school study time depends on the individual, could be 1-2 hours up to 4 hours or more. At the end of the course, the student must demonstrate reading, writing, speaking, listening and comprehension skills at the basic level (level 2). Many students do not last the year for various reasons. The year-long courses have the highest washout rate. It is during this time that the candidates are being investigated for their Top Secret clearance, with access to Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence (TS/SCI). Some are not granted this access, for various reasons, and are reassigned to other specialties, even if language training was successfully completed. They will never work in the intelligence field.

6. After learning the most basic level of the language, the candidates then must complete technical training, which introduces you to the intelligence field. The tools that are used, and how to apply your language skills to the task at hand. This training lasts four months. Failure to grasp this knowledge and apply it at the most basic level causes more candidates to washout. As these skills are somewhat different than the ones used to learn the foreign language, it is sometimes surprising to see which candidates fail and which pass, or struggle to do so.

7. After a year and a half of basic, language, and technical training, the candidate is now ready for his first duty assignment. He is not done training, however. Once arriving at his duty assignment, the candidate is now entered into training at an actual duty position. These duty positions vary in scope and difficulty that require training anywhere from a couple months to a year or more. Candidates can and do make it this far and fail. Not often, but it happens.

 

The candidate is now ready to perform the most basic, entry-level tasks in the intelligence field. It will be some time before the candidate has the necessary skill to be entrusted with the more demanding, sensitive tasks. Some candidates are selected for additional intermediate or advanced language training to increase their skills up to near-native or native, which vary in length from months to another year.

 

If you've read all of this, you can begin to appreciate the difficulty in recruiting, identifying, training, conducting background investigations, pipelining the candidates to units in need, and retaining them.

[_BiB_]

Very good post. You just don't get these people off the street. To give a post-training perspective, the organization I work for spends a lot of time in the former Soviet Union (we are responsible for treaty monitoring and verification, as well as assisting the FSU in dismantling their cold war nuclear stockpile). Our military interpreters average 10-12 years before even being considered for an assignment. They are required to not only demonstrate native fluency in Russian, but are required to have what amounts to college major level understanding of the culture and philosophy of the people. Some of these folks (all enlisted, mostly E-6 some E7) hold Masters degrees in Russian Studies, International Politics, Policy, etc)

 

I can't imagine that the intelligence agencies are (or should be) much less demanding. As a matter of fact, some of them have previously served tours with the DIA. A great many of our military people have done so as there is a huge requirement for understanding the intelligence business in order to be able to work on the combating WMD issues.

 

And, to the best of my knowledge, we don't have a single one who speaks arabic.

[UConn James]

My understanding is that the bill had a lot of unsettled issues on budget and lines of authority, and Pentagon was fighting it like mad.  I'd rather have them fight out all the isuses before passing the bill, instead of rushing to pass something to meet the lame duck deadline and pass a half arsed law.

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Much of it is politics. Pure and simple. It's a matter of who gets the credit, rather than doing what needs to be done.

 

Intelligence bill's failure reflects speaker's tactic

 

Hastert's "majority of the majority" reads a lot like "Congress within the Congress." This is exactly the type of utter crap that loses you elections. So, actually, keep it up, Denny! Maybe the right will be forced back to a position where I might consider voting for them again.