Stardate 20030407.0803

(On Screen): Ralph Peters has been a beacon of intelligence and confidence through this war in the midst of the fog that such as the NY Times have tried to create. His opinion columns in the NY Post have been essential reading.

He points out in a column today one major dog that didn't bark: there were several Iraqi divisions on the Iranian border during the war which never got involved at all. The Marine advance presented a flank to those divisions, and nothing happened. He assumes that we bought their commanders, and he's probably right. If so, it was a major victory for someone in the shadows, and cheap at the price.

And he also points out that when we capture the government records in Iraq, it will provide us with priceless intelligence data:

The Iraqi regime was a bureaucracy of terror. But it was, above all, a bureaucracy. It kept voluminous files. The secret police, diplomatic and executive archives will hold information on all the region's secret deals, as well as on the private lives and personal corruption of virtually every leader, cabinet member and senior military officer throughout the Middle East.

Syria must be terrified of what we'll find. But Egypt is doubtless plenty worried, too. And the files on Saudi princes are not going to be publishable as family reading.

We are in for some shocks as we learn of unsuspected betrayals. But the states of the region will be in for much greater surprises in the coming years.

It has been noted that the French and Russians did not want this war because they knew we would learn how they cheated on U.N. sanctions against Iraq. But the treasure trove of information we will collect on the Arab world and other Islamic states will be much more important. It will enable us to see into previously opaque issues and to squeeze many a corrupt leader who believed he was safe from external scrutiny.

The Iraqi archives will be a mother lode of information for scholars. But there is much we will choose to keep under lock and key for strategic purposes. The psychological effects of our access to those archives and to former regime officials anxious to tell all will be even greater than the practical information we accumulate.

No Arab leader will know what was or wasn't in those files. Each will have to fear the worst. President-for-life X will always have to wonder what we know as we sit across the negotiating table.

Upon reading that, it occurred to me that we might decide to destroy one leader by revealing information about him, just to prove that we can. Then, as Peters says, future negotiations with other Arab despots will go far better because of the implicit, or explicit, blackmail.

So if we do decide to destroy someone, who would it be? (Assuming, of course, that there's adequate information captured to destroy whomever we wanted?) I'd have to go with Arafat as the destructee of choice.