I see you know nothing of intelligence work. My case rests. Assume I've been doing some unlikely things from time to time -- I'll just say SIGINT most resembles radio astronomy: you're using the electromagnetic spectrum to tease out information that is not necessarily meant for you.

I'm not here to steer you wrong, Hippikos, nor am I particularly interested in scoring points.

Now tell me: do you want America to win this? If not, who would you prefer to win?

Nothing a quick trip to Wikipedia can't fix.
Click on a few "External References" links for bonus points! Oh... . . . nevemind.

To say that AQ was/is active in Iraq may be a fact. To say that AQ was/is active in America, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Belgium, Denmark et al may also be a fact. In fact, it's evident that AQ most assuredly is and was active in all these countries along with just about every other country in the world.

Why didn't the US invade Denmark to find AQ, or Australia, or any other country such as Indonesia?

I think that's the point. Perhaps it was legitimate to invade Iraq under the guise of finding AQ members however, it would have been just as justifiable to invade any of the above mentioned countries if you accept that as the reason for invading Iraq. If you do accept that, then why Iraq and not 'anywhere else in the world'?

They have oil?

Yes, that's a fact.

So, one side believes Iraq was the only place to go to find AQ. The other side believes Iraq was invaded for oil.

Oh yeah, and to bring democracy to the arabs.

Democracy is what human beings in the full flower of adulthood will do -- unless bludgeoned, armtwisted, and browbeaten into putting up with something else.

Whatever else you may say to it, PNAC has one transcendant idea: a democracy will prosper best in the company of other democracies. The events of the twentieth century and the latter nineteenth demonstrate precisely that.

I'd call this the best single political idea of this and the previous centuries. I'd call Marxism -- the undemocracy -- the worst.

You cannot "bring" a democracy to a nation, like implementing a new OS to a computer. It has to grow from inside and takes a long time to establish itself throughout all levels of a nation.

The PNAC is a typical neocon apostolic document, exclusively seen from the US point of view to dominate the world as "Pax Americana" It is a faulty idea, which has been proved the last 3 years.

Those who still think PNAC is/was a good idea, need to get a wake up call. All PNAC has brought is weakening the US strategic position and total loss of world respect, in fact it has been an utter disaster for the US for which the Bush administration will be held to account for the next decades. I firmly believe Bush will go into history as the worst president ever and will succeed Nixon for that. His last feeble SOTU was a perfect example of a lame duck waiting for his finish.

I concur with UG's assessment of Hippikos. UG states that his experience is in SIGINT (signal intelligence). My experience is in HUMINT (human intelligence).

Terrorist operations can be highly compartmentalized. There may be few sources, possibly only a single source, with useful information about specific activities. Sources are roughly rated using an alpha-numeric scale with A-G representing the reliability of the source (from totally reliable to completely unreliable; or, of unknown reliability due to lack of history) and 1-7 representing how well the source is known (from an open book to anonymous). A single source of high reliability may be more important than multiple sources of low reliability. A single well known source may be more important than multiple anonymous sources. All ratings are in the context of the relationship of the source(s) to the specific information gathering person/agency. While having multiple / well known / reliable sources with information that can be corroborated by other means is preferred, this doesn't always happen in the real world. The statement " ... rule numero uno in intelligence: only rely on multiple and corroborated sources." [bold type mine] is blatently false and reflects either fantasy; or, adherence to the old adage "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit."

I nonconcur with Flint's statement.

The Wikipedia and other open sources are not particularly good for learning contemporary tradecraft.

You mean someone like Curveball?, considered to be a "single well know source".

The Prague meeting exploited by Cheney was from a "single well know scource" (9/11 report).

Be it SIGINT, IMINT or HUMINT, fact is that US intelligence in the ME is not exactly a succes story, more like "baffle 'em with bullshit".

No matter what fancy pancy intelligence abbreviations you both google, if you only look at what actually happen in reality than everybody knows I'm right. As an expert you should know that until not so long ago the head of the ME intelligence didn't even speak Arabic and the dependence on electronic instead of on the ground human intelligence is the weakness of the US intelligence, especially in the ME.

The reason that progressive societies will fail is that the modern citizen feels they have a right to be informed and empowered in the decisions of their government. Since the government cannot act effectively while showing all their cards on the table, they have to withhold their true motivations, thus causing the "well-informed" citizen to question WTF they are doing. It's a catch-22. The government needs public support for it's actions, but it can't offer an adequate explanation while simultaneously achieving its goals. I guess that's why only good liars can lead effectively.

And that's why we have to bludgeon, armtwist, and browbeat them into accepting democracy!!

Torrere, kidding aside, you've got the wrong "them" in mind -- our whole purpose is to bludgeon the bludgeoners who oppose this improvement, leaving them too braindamaged or too dead to affect the progress towards democracy.

Not exactly a bad thing, I say. What's important is that the antidemocracy players be taken off the field. I attach very little importance to the circumstances of their departure, so long as it be permanent.

Nonconcur as a verb... now that does take me back. I'll add that really about the only way to know intelligence work is to do intelligence work and for some period of time.

Quite bluntly, no western power's intel effort has been remarkably successful in the closed regimes of the Middle East, which I attribute to inadequate HUMINT effort. The Iraqi nuclear program had absolutely everyone fooled, apparently including Saddam Hussein. But he's taken whatever he knew or didn't know to the grave and the one statement I've heard of him making about it was opaque. I get the impression that it was mid-level Iraqi officialdom that originated the deceptions.

P.S.: Hippikos is silent on whether he wants America to win. Since I think I can show that America's cause is humanity's is Hippikos', this is curious.

Whether that is the purpose or not, it is impossible. We can only bludgeon in their general direction, hitting lots of innocents, and turning them into foes.

Which leads me to ask the largely unanswerable: just what is your strategy for removing the hostility of the bigots and the control of irreplaceable resources by unfriendlies, and how is it better than what is currently in train?

Is not death the most reliable cure for bigotry?