The roundup
Ralph Peters:
"THERE are three essential rules for men to live by: Never write checks to your mistress on an account you share with your wife; never wear any article of clothing featured in a New York Times fashion supplement; and, if you're a dictator-on-the-run, never carry 500 pages of key information about your resistance movement around in your suitcase.
"The circumstances and images of Saddam's capture will reverberate for decades, with profound psychological and practical consequences in the Middle East and beyond. But the most immediate and tangible results have come from the documents he carried.
"With breathtaking speed, our intelligence professionals in Iraq began scouring those papers for actionable data. They found it. And they continue to find it.
"In Baghdad, Samarra and elsewhere, U.S. Army units launched a series of raids that scooped up key coordinators and financiers from the Ba'athist resistance, along with significant numbers of the middle managers and line supervisors of terror.
"One raid brought in over 70 enemy operatives, another netted 30. Less visible operations round up more of the sponsors of terror every day.
...
"And there's even more good news: The ultimate power of the documents seized with Saddam is even greater than the information actually in those pages. Apart from the wave of arrests weakening our enemies, the beauty of the thing is that, while the die-hards have heard that we captured Saddam's personal papers, none of those still on the loose know exactly what was in those documents.
"No resistance leader, double agent or back-alley facilitator knows whether or not his name and whereabouts were on one of Saddam's lists. None knows for certain which safe houses or money conduits have been compromised. They don't know which arms caches or rendevous points we're watching in the dead of night.
"It's their turn to live in fear of ambushes.
"What your enemy doesn't know you don't know is almost as powerful as knowing it."
Ralph Peters:
"THERE are three essential rules for men to live by: Never write checks to your mistress on an account you share with your wife; never wear any article of clothing featured in a New York Times fashion supplement; and, if you're a dictator-on-the-run, never carry 500 pages of key information about your resistance movement around in your suitcase.
"The circumstances and images of Saddam's capture will reverberate for decades, with profound psychological and practical consequences in the Middle East and beyond. But the most immediate and tangible results have come from the documents he carried.
"With breathtaking speed, our intelligence professionals in Iraq began scouring those papers for actionable data. They found it. And they continue to find it.
"In Baghdad, Samarra and elsewhere, U.S. Army units launched a series of raids that scooped up key coordinators and financiers from the Ba'athist resistance, along with significant numbers of the middle managers and line supervisors of terror.
"One raid brought in over 70 enemy operatives, another netted 30. Less visible operations round up more of the sponsors of terror every day.
...
"And there's even more good news: The ultimate power of the documents seized with Saddam is even greater than the information actually in those pages. Apart from the wave of arrests weakening our enemies, the beauty of the thing is that, while the die-hards have heard that we captured Saddam's personal papers, none of those still on the loose know exactly what was in those documents.
"No resistance leader, double agent or back-alley facilitator knows whether or not his name and whereabouts were on one of Saddam's lists. None knows for certain which safe houses or money conduits have been compromised. They don't know which arms caches or rendevous points we're watching in the dead of night.
"It's their turn to live in fear of ambushes.
"What your enemy doesn't know you don't know is almost as powerful as knowing it."
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