How Obama is Transforming America's Military from Superpower to Paper Tiger. Jed Babbin

Obama administration insists that the CIA global warming study is “free,” that it uses only satellite downtime and doesn’t detract from the gathering or analysis of real intelligence information. But that contention is, at best, absurd.

      Intelligence satellites - each of which costs upwards of $100 million - have a finite life. Every time they are repositioned, they use fuel that cannot be replaced. And every hour a CIA analyst spends examining radar images of a polar bear’s behind is one less hour spent analyzing information that might reveal where Osama bin Laden is hiding or how close Iran may be to producing a nuclear warhead.

      Without the best intelligence and analysis, policy making is mere guesswork. And our intelligence is woefully inadequate.

      In August 2006, the Republican staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a special report that severely criticized the CIA and other intelligence agencies for lacking “the ability to acquire essential information necessary to make judgments” on Iran’s nuclear weapon program.

      Almost four years later, nothing has improved. Gates, the former CIA director and current secretary of defense, admitted on NBC’s April 11, 2010, Meet the Press that while Iran isn’t now “nuclear capable,” if it gains that capability, we won’t be able to know if it is converting nuclear capability into nuclear arms.

      The inescapable inference is that even if the Iranians prove to the world that they are able to build nuclear weapons, we don’t have the ability to know whether or not they are building them. But it’s OK to divert scarce intelligence assets to study global warming.

      Every hour a CIA analyst spends examining radar images of a polar bear’s behind is one less hour spent analyzing information that might reveal where Osama bin Laden is hiding or how close Iran may be to producing a nuclear warhead.

       IS “NEXT-WAR-ITIS” A MENTAL DISEASE?

      From the Revolutionary War through Korea, it has been America’s unfortunate tradition to be unprepared for war. In both World Wars and Korea, we went to war with the weapons, strategies, and tactics of the previous war. It’s not our experience alone. The French, for example, built the Maginot Line to repel the German Army of World War I, but only after that war was over. By 1940, the Luftwaffe and Wehr - macht of World War II had evolved past 1918.

      After Korea, we belatedly took George Washington’s admonition to heart. In his first annual address to Congress in 1790, Washington said, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.” And we did it with a history-making investment that produced a constant flow of new technologies. Because our economy was so strong, we could and did invest in the men and machines that would dominate any modern battlefield. Our military and intelligence community was led by people who jumped on opportunities to advance those technologies. I was privileged to know some of these men.

      In the late 1980s, while working for Lock-heed Corporation, I was befriended by an irascible genius by the name of Ben Rich. (He liked to say that around Lockheed’s super-secret “Skunk Works,” he was known as “FBR” and that the “F” wasn’t for “friendly.”) A thermodynamicist by trade, Rich apprenticed with the great Kelly Johnson, and by the time I met him, he was the head of the Skunk Works.