WHistle:

Thanks. I think you put your finger on the issue. A sound alternative -- who has one? I have mentioned a number of tactics on the PR front which would make changes in the mind-set of fundy Islam, and I have been told I should hush, am being unrealistic. One was a unified PR campaign recruiting all the Islam women safe (more or less) in Western countries to inundate their sisters with photos and letters of their boys learning to be doctors, their daughters going to college, and their small safe homes with hot water and an SUV. I suspect this would start a ground swell where it matters. Another was to do everything possible to characterize the Quesadillans as a cult, with all the negative implications of that word. There were a few others I've forgotten.

On the military front, our biggest single failure is the abandonment of human intelligence in favor of electronic intelligence. We apparently felt perfectly fine about leaving Afghanistan a hotbed of potential disaster after the Russians left, left no networks of ground intelligence, cultivated no friends. I would bet that the number of Farsi speakers in Arlington today is about 50 times what it was two months ago and is still inadequate.

What we really need is a bomb that is smart enough to locate DNA in the world!! Then all we would need is some of bin L's toenails and we could work a major voodoo on that boy. (Kidding....)

Seriously, I feel that anyone who wishes to unleash carping generalized criticism would be honor bound to sugest alternative approaches.

A