Is a national intelligence apparatus really worth having when it has been so wrong on so many big items (Soviet military strength, WMD in Iraq, etc.), yet has a paranoid freak-out about Canadian 'poppy' quarters?
by 
Old School
ANSWERS: 2
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It's not worth it at all - its purpose is purely exploitive.
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If you don't have a national intelligence organization, then you don't know what your enemies are doing. Sure they can be wrong at times. People make mistakes. However, in writing this question you are also ignoring the big successes of such organizations. For security reasons, such organizations don't usually trumpet their successes until well after the fact, but there have been a lot of successes. In WWII the intelligence services were able to obtain and/or break most of our enemies' codes, thus allowing us to know what they were up to. Meanwhile, they were able to come up with some codes of our own that the enemy never did break. More recently, there have been numerous terrorist attacks on the US and other countries that have been prevented by the work various intelligence services. So, to only point out their failures is unfair. The fact of the matter is that we do live in a dangerous world. There are people out there that do want to kill everyone that will not do as they say. By dismantling a countries intelligence services, you are blinding that country to potential threats.
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