Even a lauded intellectual could...also be as thick as a plank.
Soldiers become really angry about people threatening children.
The effects of profound trauma are severe and none of them are pretty.
A good-looking woman with a fixed determination would always make an Exocet missile look like a badly designed firework.
Deception operations can be exceptionally damaging to the opponent and beneficial to oneself. They can cause the enemy months, even years, of error. Time, money, effort, sweat, toil and tears. And all for nothing. Even for a lot less than nothing. For error. But the worst variant is self-delusion. ~ Sir Adrian Weston
The desire to believe is always the precursor of a successful confidence trick. ~ Sir Adrian Weston
Logical (people) are always frightened of the insane. ~ Sir Adrian Weston
Most politicians and far too many senior civil servants possess a personal ego of Himalayan proportions. Such a vanity could permit self-delusion with little harm done other than the expenditure of huge sums of taxpayers' money to no purpose. Government waste is a fact of life. But if you indulge in self-delusion on a covert mission in the heart of an enemy dictatorship, you can end up very dead.
People will fight if they are destined to perpetual poverty. ~ Sir Adrian Weston
Today, the key to prosperity is energy - cheap, constant energy and masses of it. ~ Sir Adrian Weston
Superiors like only good news, and ... these instances of good news, unless repeated, are soon forgotten. Failures, on the other hand, are etched into the record.
A sniper is different. In combat, men kill men, in the air, at sea or by shell, grenade and mortar on the ground. But they hardly ever see them as other human beings. When they use a rifle, the enemy is still just a form, a shape that slumps to the ground when dead. The sniper studies every tiny detail of the victim before squeezing the trigger and ending the life. It is not enough to be a marksman. Such an ace ... can win an Olympic gold medal, but that piece of cardboard is presented to him, clipped motionless in place, unprotected. The combat sniper is a true manhunter. Both have the capacity for total concentration, but the sniper must add to that the ability to remain utterly motionless, if need be for hours. The competition marksman does not need to hide himself; the sniper must remain invisible.... All that waiting, all that thinking. It makes for a very private man.
There is a moment to stay put and a moment to move. Pick the right one and you will see old age.
There was a time, a generation and a military tradition that taught other things (besides men crying). In triumph, modesty. In pain, stoicism. In defeat, grace under fire. But very rarely tears.
Anger clouds judgment, defeats logic, obscures clarity. When things go wrong an intelligent man needs all three.
In a thoroughly imperfect world (espionage) is necessary if the safe and free are to remain safe and free.
On modern planet Earth decency is something to which only a small minority still hold.
Quiet influence is an aspect of British official life of which, like the iceberg, very little is ever observed.
Since 9-11, the US has constructed "the biggest, the most cumbersome, the most duplicated and possibly the most inefficient national security structure the world has ever seen.
If the nine inner US intelligence agencies and the seven outer agencies has been doing their jobs in 2001, 9/11 would never have occurred.
What followed 9/11 was an explosion of expenditure that is literally breathtaking. Something had to be done, and be seen to be done, by the great American public, so it was. A raft of new agencies was created to duplicate and mirror the work of the existing ones. Thousands of new skyscrapers sprang up, entire cities of them, most owned and run by the private-sector-contracted enterprises eager for the fathomless dollar harvest. Government expenditure on the single pandemic word "security" detonated like a nuke over Bikini Atoll, all uncomplainingly paid for by the ever-trusting, ever-hopeful, ever-gullible American taxpayer. The exercise generated an explosion of reports, on paper and online, so vast that only about 10% of them have ever been read. ... And something else happened....The computer and its archive, the database, became rulers of the world.
Politicians seldom have to convinced of the need for caution. There are medal-awarding ceremonies at Buckingham Palace, but they never involve politicians.
That single day (9-11) left the United States not simply shocked but traumatized. She still is. When an American government is wounded that badly, it does two things. It demands and exacts revenge, and it spends.
Even a lauded intellectual could...also be as thick as a plank.