北约驻阿富汗高级情报官员对美军的情报收集工作进行了严厉批评，警告说，由于不了解当地社会，指挥官们无法获得遏制塔利班所需的信息。
Nato's top intelligence officer in Afghanistan has issued a scathing critique of US military intelligence-gathering, warning a failure to understand local communities has deprived commanders of information needed to contain the Taliban.
美国资深情报官员迈克尔•菲尔林(Michael Flynn)少将形容道，指挥官们龟缩在基地里，周围是一群分析师，大家对西方誓言保护的民众的关切只有朦胧的把握。
Major General Michael Flynn, a veteran US intelligence officer, depicted commanders cocooned in bases surrounded by analysts with only a hazy grasp of the concerns of the people the west has vowed to protect.
“通常情况下，级别越高的军官，越是两眼一抹黑，”菲尔林等人在昨日发表的一份报告中表示。“对于高级决策者为开展反叛乱战争而寻求获 得的知识、分析和信息，美国情报官和分析师除了耸耸肩以外，什么也做不了。”他表示，分析师们常常觉得，他们的工作“更像是算命，而不是严肃的侦查工 作”。
“Moving up through levels of hierarchy is normally a journey into greater degrees of cluelessness,” wrote Maj-Gen Flynn and his co-authors in a report released yesterday. “US intelligence officers and analysts can do little but shrug in response to high-level decision-makers seeking the knowledge, analysis and information they need to wage a successful counterinsurgency.” He said analysts often felt their jobs were “more like fortune-telling than serious detective work”.
在圣诞日发生针对美国客机的未遂炸机事件，以及上周阿富汗发生导致7名中央情报局(CIA)人员死亡的自杀袭击后，这份报告将重新激起人们对美国情报能力的担忧。
The report will renew concerns over the capability of US intelligence in the wake of a suicide attack that killed seven Central Intelligence Agency personnel in Afghanistan last week and the attempt to blow up a US airliner on Christmas day.
这份报告发表之际，美国官员正试图查清，一名约旦人（据称是基地组织的双面间谍）上周是怎么潜入阿富汗东部的一个军事基地，给中情局造成25年来最惨重单日伤亡的。
The report was published as officials sought to ascertain how a Jordanian man reported to be an al-Qaeda double agent was able to infiltrate a military base in eastern Afghanistan last week and inflict the biggest death toll on the CIA in one day in more than 25 years.
该报告是美国智囊团——新美国安全中心(Center for a New American Security)在上述事件发生前委托撰写的，重点关注为美国国防部工作的军人和文职分析师。
The report was commissioned by the Center for a New American Security, a US think-tank, before the latest incidents, and focuses on the US military and civilian analysts employed by the department of defence.
报告的语气接近于激愤，其中引用了一位美国官员的话：“我不想说我们无知，但我们确实是两眼一抹黑。我们对环境的了解不过是一鳞半爪。”
Written in a tone bordering on exasperation, the report quotes one US officer as saying: “I don't want to say we're clueless, but we are. We're no more than fingernail-deep in our understanding of the environment.”