Please take note that UG has no answer for this:

or this:
What does that tell you?

It would seem obvious that you could spin things like that so long as the fighting in Afghanistan is still going on. I call that intellectual dishonesty, dar512. I urge you to cease it and forever desist, that you may come into the practice of honesty, rather than sympathizing with more fascistic mullahs. Sure, the fighting's not over, and none of us knows when it might be, and shooting at foreigners is still almost more of an Afghan tribal sport than playing bushkazi. I don't expect peace, quietude, or rose gardens there anytime soon, precisely because of the Afghan penchant for shooting at anybody of a different language, a penchant practiced mutually by everybody.

We are struggling primarily against a non-national enemy who is driven by his bigotry, is he not? The way we can beat these people is by getting information, since we cannot put pressure upon their nation -- and clearly we are indeed getting information enough to take down their leadership on a semiregular basis, which tells me we're doing something right -- I've been involved in secretive national doings myself, whose triumphs are unheralded every bit as much as their failures get trumpeted. I reckon we are having our successes, quietly. I don't think we should be interrupting them.

Your second boxful is frankly frothy rhetorical stuff, unworthy of reply. Think better.

Most of our successes are pretty quiet to those not having them, i suppose. The media isn't let to know about them a whole lot.
I'll bet they're not too quiet to those in the room with the uh, 'successes' though. They're probably more like

no...please...imtellingyouidontknow...whatareyoudoingwiththaaaaaaaaanostopnomakeitstopgurglegurglenoooimtellingyouiswearaaaaaagaspgaspgaspmakeitstopmakeitstoppleaseimbeggingyouuuuuu

...you dont want to know what the failures sound like.
mostly, they stop after that gurgle, gurgle part.

Ibby you just sent a shiver down my spine.

UG precedes that quote by claiming he was privy to secret successes. Then he *speculates* that torture results in useful information. For all his privy access, he really does not know? In the next sentence, he converts total speculation into a fact - then uses that 'fact' to justify torture.

Barak used this exact same logic to 'play the white boys'.

Urbane Guerrilla cannot answer and completely sidesteps two simple questions: and Urbane Guerrilla is asked these questions repeatedly. UG avoids answering these questions repeatedly by attacking the questioner. How ironic. UG's responses are typical of a conspiring terrorist trying to hide his complicity. Even Barak did not resort to deceit.

UG - dar512 asked you two simple questions. Why not answer him with honesty? Is honesty that difficult - especially when it might contradict a political agenda? Answer his questions without political accusations. His questions are simple. Why can Urbane Guerrilla not answer dar512’s questions? Why must UG attack the messenger?

It tells me they are doing a good job of keeping things secret that should be kept that way and you don't know if a positive or negative result has happened or not.

Neither of you, tw or dar, are being honest, and if you get attacked for your dishonesty, you really shouldn't be implying I'm anything other than right. Enjoy your pseudotriumph if you can but remember: it's all based on you lying to yourselves. You can't lie to me. You never could accept the best answer, and tw in particular cannot endure an American victory, and is covering this up very thinly with noise. You and I both know what an actively antipatriotic individual you are, and for it you are damned.

Would you like some music to go with that dance?

I've given a worthwhile answer. Those who say otherwise are merely talking stuff.

I can picture you with earplugs, saying nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, while you type that. It made me giggle like a school girl.

Dar's dishonesty consisted in the conceiving of his question: he might better have put it "Are we winning in Afghanistan and if so, when have we won?" That might have been a better question, and it wouldn't have been crafted to try and trip up someone, as dar's was -- not that he's very good at that when he's crossing swords with someone of my experience. If I'm going to answer a "have you stopped beating your wife" special, it will be an answer to something deeper than the surface of the question.

Tw has for a couple of years now been desperate to find anything at all he could give me grief about. Not on his best day. Not for the likes of him.

The opposition to this war against the newest fascists remains without any idea for actually winning it at all, let alone winning it better than the Bush Administration can. This prevents their point of view from having worth or integrity. You yourself, Bruce, have no idea how better to win this war, nor, I note, any principles on which to base an idea that your road has more virtue than mine. I did in effect ask you about that not long ago and got back complete silence. Either you have no principles on which to oppose me, or you're being reticent because you doubt they'd compare well to mine, or...? Just because you once told me you weren't at all on my side, is that any particular reason to run around trying to prove it at each and every opportunity? People who try that around me tend to talk themselves into corners...

The only right road against undemocracy is to win against it. There's nothing wrong with accomplishing this by a holistic strategy incorporating both war and peace -- but war is needed to answer the war they'd start to prevent, for whatever reason their warmongers think sufficient, their integration into the global economy and attendant culture, or mosaic of cultures.

Please fill us with your honesty. Our loins ache for your honesty. Answer dar512's two simple questions.

You don't know the answer, dar doesn't know the answer, I don't know the answer (though I have understanding enough of these things to make a couple guesses), Sean Hannity doesn't know the answer. There's a whole crowd of us who don't have a definitive, fully knowledgeable answer.

And OPSEC is why. This whole fight is going to be won or lost on HUMINT. HUMINT can be a dirty business -- it's where the old cloak and dagger of espionage novels comes in. Of course, losing the war is even dirtier than that, isn't it? Or had you noticed? Most of the rest of information gathering is a day at the office, or something close to radio astronomy. These only become relevant if they are where the information is. With this foe, these are mostly where the information isn't.

There is one answer I do know: if we do it the way you want it done, success will not follow. There will be no "positive conclusion" if we do what you want. I'd rather not have it that way, understanding your motivations as clearly as I do.