When at peace prepare for WAR we are now at war. Previously the NSA was preparing and they have gone to war with the army they now have. This is a massive defensive stance based on security of a rather large country of an unorganized social structure. So assets worth protecitng are spread all over. Basic allocation of resources will tell you that you cannot protect everything so the selection process starts what to save and what to burn before the invading horde arrives. I suggest that the Open Society become aware of their position outside the circle of protected assets. So it stands to reason they must fortify in what way seems best to them. The Closed Society will look at them as canaries brought down to mines. The large mass of cannon fodder in between Colin Powell leader of the Closed Society and the Invading Horde is of little or no interest in this War scenario. Imagine if the NDA where issued by the Peoples Invading Horde. I suggest the Open Society find a nice valley in Switzerland where the prevailing winds will not carry the fallout. The Open Society must now defend itself by creating limited access to itself. A greater threat is about to make itself known. The invading hordes are coming from both sides the closed society is really a horde and Powell would as easily as blink an eye do what is felt the right thing. Remember Clinton painted a rational face on a horde's desire for power. Imagine the shock of having climbed into bed with reason ready for a nights passion only to find a rather large Goblin next to you. Now we have all done this drunk and upon awakening found Goblins but this one will eat while you sleep. Wake up, sober up and stop trying to figure out which Goblin eats less or looks nicer than the other Goblins. I've been reading the exploits of Ryan Lackey lately in Iraq and find it interesting that his access to the Open Society has not been curtailed due over self promotion. If one where to wish to obtain money by attracting attention to join a WG in the time of War one might expect restrictions. Stop pretending there is no war just becasue the two parties are so bad at conducting it that it goes un-noticed.

Those contracts are nice, but it's a matter of ethics and morale with me. If I thought I could make a difference and wouldn't need to bend out of my personality too much, I might take it. If not, the contract can get lost (not without me blogging about it, however :)

@Jimbo: your diction is very militaristic. It has been said by a lot of people (including me, of course :) that there is no "war on terror" like there is no "war on drugs". You can try hard to fight both, but you have no well-defined front line. Face it: it's threats we have here and risks, not a "war" nor "fights". The best way to keep safe and/or get safer is dealing with the risks (i.e. minimizing them in the most efficient way - and classifying once public information is not going to work, see below) and minimizing the threats (by taking away the incentives of potential attackers).

Trying to classify each and everything in order to keep it safe or, rather, make it safe, is a silly effort because it will not help anything. In other words, the people will feel safe while essentially they aren't.
An Open Society can still be vigilant - and it's not even debatable whether that's a good idea or not (of course it is). And you're very wrong if you say that "the Open Society must now defend itself by creating limited access to itself". It's not possible to "defend" oneself alone or to make oneself scarce. That's one of the biggest failures I attribute to the American Way Of The 90s: the arrogance of thinking "We can do what we want because we are the only remaining super power and no one will be able to harm us." This thinking definitely was one of the reasons for 9/11/2001 and it is proven to be false by the extreme failure of the Iraq war.

Well, tap dancing here to avoid war-on-FC that is about to erupt ... But there is a connection between the whole war thing and FC so it has to be given some careful, sanitised airplay, otherwise we are in danger of missing the reality.

FC is connected to all that political bumph by means of the war on our money. This manifests itself in the various drugs, money laundering, OECD harmful taxation, etc etc. Each of those loosely coordinated attacks on the financial system need to be critically analysed for their efficacy and return on investment. (Having lived in two countries that were battered by this war I can suggest that questioning their efficacy is quite a reasonable thing to do.)

For the current war on terror, I'd suggest the best source for information would be the thread on 4GW and John Boyd's work. This basically attempts to package up the writings of others into an americanised format.

Ian G: reading your post gave me the impression that Colin Powell
is going to remain an insider in the Bush Administration. This
is untrue: when he leaves his Secretary of State job, he is not
going to take some other job in the Administration. Of course,
he will still have the contacts/goodwill that he made while Secretary.
Is that what you meant by his "continued presence within"?

Richard,
I have no special info on that, last I heard he was taking a post inside, which I was surprised at. I'd say that it's much more likely he is leaving.

(I think the example he makes is still good, regardless of what Gen. Powell decides to do.)