There's a debate among intelligence analysts that goes back to long before the founding of the CIA. Some argue that intelligence analysts should ignore politics, focusing entirely on calling the facts as they see them. They argue that intelligence analysts who take politics into account risk tailoring facts to make the policymaker happy hurt the country by failing to deliver bad news when the policymaker needs to hear it. Others argue that failing to take the policymaker's primary interest--politics and reelection--into account means that intelligence analysts are isolated, ignored, and risk becoming irrelevant.

Now's your turn. What do you think?