Iraq by the Numbers - or how to be dumb.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

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.