dianavan 13 Apr 04 - 02:58 AM

"What if you put the right information in front of the decision makers and they fail to act on it."

dianavan,
If you would like a perfect example of the above, read up about the German invasion of Crete during the Second World War. The island was defended by General Freyberg's NewZealand Corps. The attack was to be led by an airbourne assault, with the objective of capturing an airfield and holding it while additional aircraft flew in to reinforce and establish air superiority.

In terms of intelligence Freyberg had everything, date, time, objective, enemy strength, means and method of deployment. Freyberg's men outnumbered the attacking forces, normally in making any form of assault on a defended position you want to out-number the defenders by at least three-to-one, albeit only locally, for your assault to have any chance of suceeding. There have been exceptions, like the German airbourne troops in this case.

Dispositions made Freyberg was extremely confident that Crete would hold, unfortunately he interpreted the content of a signal, that could only have been described as vital, as meaning that the main enemy attack would come from a seabourne invasion. When the German paratroopers landed he just could not react in time.