During WWII the initials OSS were considered a nickname for an outfit called “OH SO SOCIAL” a nickname that reflected the fact that many members were Yale History and Literature Majors — with a few language students and geographers thrown in for good measure. They did a decent job of it in London and Washington DC, applying various academic tools to wartime problems, but they were really a complete flop at the spy business behind enemy lines. The young French Majors did get to go behind the lines — the Jedburgs were teams of OSS, technical types such as radio operators, dropped to the French Underground mostly in the South of France, with the mission of connecting them and the French Sabatoge up with the requirements of the invasions, D-Day and then in the South of France. That was about the only time OSS went behind the lines, and it was medium successful. McCain sure hasn’t read much of the history available in say the last 25 years based on the actual record of what OSS did well and not so well. Some of OSS’s best work was breaking code — done with quite primative card sort machines, and mostly done in and around DC. Yea, it was really risky sorting all those punch cards.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com…..l_aid3.pdf

“The Information Collection Program”
Early in the Bush 43 Administration, actions began that clearly reflected a predisposition to place regime change in Iraq at the top of the foreign policy agenda. Sometime in January 2001, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the opposition group headed by Dr. Ahmed Chalabi, began receiving U.S. State Department funds to begin an effort called the “Information Collection Program.” Under the Clinton Administration, some money had been given to Iraqi exiles for what might be called agit-prop activities against Saddam’s government but the INC (Chalabi) had not been taken very seriously because they had a bad reputation for spending money freely, with very little to show for it. The CIA had concluded that he and his INC colleagues were not to be trusted with taxpayer’s money. Nevertheless, Chalabi had longstanding ties to a group of well-established anti-Saddam American activists who were installed by the Bush Administration as leading figures of the politically appointed civilian bureaucracy in the Pentagon and in the Office of the Vice President.
Those ties paid off. The “Information Collection Program,” launched in the early months of the Bush Administration, was aimed at providing funds to the INC for recruiting defectors from Saddam’s military and secret police,
5

Going to bed so I can be the first in line at the unemployment office tomorrow.

BTW, voted early yesterday. Even in Obama’s home state, there was a 45 minute wait. Historic? You betcha!