. If stopping this war is the question I do not have an answer. It would be like trying to stop 1,000 supertankers at full speed from hitting the statue of Liberty on a 1 mile collision course. ': Time for all these things to happen is compromised when one leads with the fist. You can consult the art of war yourself but if you want literal war strategies HERE is one outlined scenario. Slow down... secretly cease the expected counter attack...A quick reaction would serve our purposes best with a miniature defeat... listen and watch. They will become confused between overconfidence and fear of a belated reprisal causing some mistakes to be exploited. Monitor the reaction when they think there is no massive US reponse. If a call for fatwa occurs more clues will crawl out of the woodwork and we can collect strategic bonanzas. At home there needs to be good old fashioned systemic beurocratic work with complete cross over communication between the CIA,FBI,INO,NSA,CC,DOD,Eschelon,Interpole and others . Recruit the talent you need in cyber and cultural areas that was not available or willing to help us before the attack. Set them apart from in house pros and give them a project similar in scope to WWII code breaking. Use time and sympathy of the International community well. Dry up some financial holdings, but not 'all' so you can still do in depth tracing of the money they try to use. There will be plenty of time through December and January for international support to grow. Beware of revolutions springing up in quasi moderate Islamic states like Saudi Arabia(they are not helping at this time and the King has fled to Geneva). Do not enter into their civil war. Learn from the mistakes of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and get Congress to ask the hard questions as soon as possible. Blank checks are for blind policy. Appropriate with insight. In forming an international tribunal if the UN will not unaminously support a G5 request form a brand new tribunal consisting of Islmaic judges and near complete international representation , the obvious missing judges would be Isreal , India and perhaps even the US . IF a perception of a puppet or Kangaroo court occurs having the US publicly get denied select outrageous and reasonable requests should solve that. Go to the Hague or create one in Nuremberg if we have to. Based on the intelligence from the US ,interpole and other's evidence is presented for 2 years or more handing down public indictments that would not jeopardize the covert operations of sensitive secret indictments. As in magic , misdirection will be an advantage to get the terrorists not mentioned in the public indictments. If there is an international array of enforcment volunteers make sure they have clear cut warrants and single targets to capture. Make sure Islams know of bounties for certain indictments handed down so even a single modest man could be instrumental in handing over a terrorist. Choose your seasons and tides of PR well. Whatever help moderate cleriks can afford in the months prior to Ramadan and right after will probably be the maximum help they can ever produce. Link further extractions with the most favorable PR afforded by Islams themselves as well as bounties that serve Islam to capture Islam. Do not mix the various tribes of Islam when employing bounties. Like catchs like. Fomenting additional hatred between various branches of Islam is not to our advantage here for many reasons. Of course there are new weapons that can be used without knowledge to the outside world. Many of these as I will call them vibrational weapons are nearly non leathal and can be used with much stealth. Enough said.

Fullfill the capture of the leading criminals the tribunal granted public indictments for and call that a victory. The secret warrants may be done as best advantage allows. But like I said , I think its too late since after our rolling thunder air raid any number of crimes could be alleged against the US true or not here is the other thread.

I gave this crude idea a couple hours of thought and wrote this with no workable knowledge of existing intel programs. No crystal ball but I had inspiration from the likes of the Dali Lama , William Weld and Elvis Prestly : "wise men say , only fools rush in , but Bush can't help bombing Afghan i stan." The public has every right to want to smite the enemy right now - and we may get one or two right away. It seems that there is great hope that prudence is our on side with the statements from the DOD that this will be a very long process.

Setting the correct goal is crucial. Our existing goal is not a precise one "ridding the world of evil" but it will do until time for refining it allows.

Send US toops into the Afgan mountains of 10 million land mines? We are too smart for that. We have an advisor in the defeated Russian general that fought the Afgan war.

There will again be a time when our enemy is again our friend.