Comment on The Belmont Club"Cracked Crystal Ball"

only a temporary fix, though a symbolically important one
Children playing with shadows while the Beast comes closer.

principal difficulty in predicting the future is that it hasn’t happened yet
Here I disagree with wretchard. There is an element that is attracted to the Intelligence business precisely because you can predict anything about the future. Valerie Plame and her Walter Mitty husband thrived in a situation where their opinions are not subject to verification. Link this thread and the prior one together and consider how can we both retain secure control over information that should be classified and attract and supervise reliable people?

Iran has only recently admitted to the Qom plant but may have others. If the Army had taken a left turn in 2004 and removed the Syrian regime we may have found the missing WMD, freed Lebanon from the the yoke of Hezbollah and deflated Hamas. If the Army had turned right then the Iranian regime may well have collapsed.