I found the fundamental error in this piece. It's at the very bottom...

Lara M. Dadkhah is an intelligence analyst.
One of the better S-2's that I had said, more than once, that it was inappropriate for him to comment on operations because it would cloud his judgment on analyzing intelligence (I'm paraphrasing). His job was to inform the commander about the enemy situation. The author seems to have strayed for beyond that - making hasty assessments of operations, getting most of them wrong, and then publishing them in the NY Times.

FAIL.