One thing about the cloak and dagger world- you never know what's real and what's not. Last year there was a wave of crashes of military transport aircraft in Islamic nations. Coincidence? Probably. Or has the CIA developed a way to clandestinely and remotely interfere with an aircraft's onboard systems? You have to be careful, though , about going into the fantasy zone- the Arab mentality that says that since scenario A sounds remotely possible, it must be true.

Just thought of getting a thread going actually discussing something to to with strategy/tactics. Like comparing the different tactics for dealing with a hostage situation: - Talking until the hostage takers give up volutarily, atleast until the hostage takers start killing. (Used to be standard procedure) - Bursting into the building/area from all possible entries and directions, excluding the main entry and shooting the hostage takers. (Like the SAS did at the Iranian embassy in 1980) - Using a tunnel to assault the terrorists (Like in Peru) - Using gas to assault the terrorists (Like in the theater in Moscow). This seems a very promosing future tactic for dealing with hostage takers who are also suicide bombers.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/09/09/sprj.irq.main/index.html Seems like Bush is aquiring the funds for the next move in the war on terror. $20 billion for reconstruction and $51 billion for military operations. That is 71 billion and leaves 16 billion (some of it surely for secret operations?). Also once the Iraqi oil starts flowing a large part of the rebuilding of Iraq will finance itself and possibly releasing more resources for Bush to use. Also letting other nations take part in Iraq releases some of the burden on the USA and will also release rescources for further steps in the war on terror. Makes me wonder how much military operations one could finance with that kind of money.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/press_release/2003/pr02072003.html Seems that there are 2 CIA casualties in Afghanistan (that they will admit).

Every CIA casualty gets a "star" set in the wall at CIA headquarters. Some of the stars have names. Some of these stars are blank. These are the CIA losses that cannot be revealed. In other words, when the CIA loses a man, they honor the sacrifice, even when they cannot discuss the name or circumstances. The star goes up- no explanation, no clue. I wonder how many new blank stars will have appeared on the wall by 2010. Despite my own Army bias, these guys really are the best and brightest of us.

The Wall http://www.cia.gov/cia/information/tour/stars.html 80 stars. When I last saw that wall, it was 53 stars, but that was a long time ago.

Your are kind of dreaming. Intelligence is more about analising thing. Watching and collecting information. Looking up where did the money come from. And so on. Then if you find a iminent threat you call the right people to handle it.

Intelligence is more about analising thing. Watching and collecting information. Looking up where did the money come from. And so on. Then if you find a iminent threat you call the right people to handle it. Don't agree. Clandestine operations and assasinations are also a tool of war. Israel uses assasination of key Palestinian terror leaders to disrupt the terrorists organisation structure. The US used assasination to attempt to take out Saddam early in the war. Clandestine operations are also neccesary Terrorists will often cross borders into "neutral" countries and use these countries as a "safe area". Rolling in with tanks roaring and playing Wagner at full volume might result in a full scale war with the up until now "neutral" country. Better take them out silently with a covert operation SAS SEAL, etc. Also if you wait until you find an imminent threat, you are to late as 9/11 demonstrated. You have to find and eliminate EMERGING threats (take them out while the're still small).