[TigersEye]

Thank you for your post #103. You said what I didn't have the words to say. No one knows if (no one here that is) if the plan is on track or not. The people who do know aren't going to tell anyone either. But your summation is spot on.

[nicollo]

Thanks. I'm a historian (hard "h"), so I try to keep my analysis to known facts. The only thing one can say for sure is what has happened up until the now, and, to an extent, what has not happened (there is no often no proof of what has not happened). Everything that follows is unsure, and too many people try to claim it. The past is equally full of the unknowable. For example, I don't know that Iraq has not been able to export WMD. I am sure that it is a more difficult proposition with the 3rd ID sitting in the front yard. The only thing we can do is to find truth as best we can. As my father says, every untruth makes the world that much less perfect.

The most important thing for a historian to remember, as David McCullough said, is that in history nothing that has happened has to have happened that way.