An unclassified Air Force report issued in April 2003 categorized 50 attacks from March 19 to April 18 as having been time-sensitive strikes on Iraqi leaders. An up-to-date accounting posted on the Web site of the United States Central Command shows that 43 of the top 55 Iraqi leaders on the most-wanted list have now been taken into custody or killed, but that none were taken into custody until April 13, 2003, and that none were killed by airstrikes.

... commanders were required to obtain advance approval from Mr. Rumsfeld if any planned airstrike was likely to result in the deaths of 30 more civilians. More than 50 such raids were proposed, and all were approved ...

The trend over the last decade or so has been that the US military is so intensively technologized that our military allies can't really cooperate closely because they just don't have the toys. But since it's turning out that we simply don't have a significant spying capability, maybe they have something to offer after all. Anyway, it's been years since 9/11 - how many Arabic speakers are the CIA, DIA, NSA, ETC, employing? If the number's not in the thousands, can we ask some more officials to resign for personal reasons?

"When you take a large country the size of Iraq, with all those sensors and communications, how do you get the right information to the right person who needs it in a timely manner?" General Cone said.

I guess my hope would have been that the US military would have had the answer to that question before dropping all those bombs. My taxes are paying for this. Your taxes, American readers, are paying for this.