There is a decreasing chance the US can apply its military might to defeat an unconventional enemy. That kind of enemy is not what long-standing military strategy and most tactics are aimed at. Rumsfeld was hoping to revise that when yet one more mighty military war appeared to head off changing military policy. The US has demonstrated in Afghanistan and post-Hussein Iraq that it does not know how to fight unconventionally. That inability appeared in Korea, then Viet Nam and has been shown in every combat the US has engaged in since WW 2. Military professionals know this and are hamstrung by the narcotic dependency the defense industry and its beneficiaries has for big iron and every bigger and more expensive platforms. This has been coupled with gigantism in intelligence, big science and big technological research advocated and overseen by giant corporations and institutions. And to gloss this a huge spin and propoganda machine has been funded to pump up the threats and the hefty defense tax boondogling. Special forces and operations were devised to piss-ant an alternative to this spread across the US pork-barrell behemothicism. But they have seldom been applied beyond pinprick displays, with much hoorahing about their stealthy effectiveness: "we can tell you about our successes, only failures make it to the media." Commentators have noted the corrupting influence of empire Britain thinking its global navy would assure continuance of hegemony. The more that conceit was believed the weaker the military became by its failure to recognize new forms of warfare and new ways of thinking. That empire was undermined by non-hegemonic forms of combat and thinking. The US might get a bye with its arrogant belief in military might for another generation if its lucky, if unlucky it will not survive this one. Well, parts of it may survive, away from the cities. Imagine one of the few cypherpunks holed-up in northwest Utah and one bunkered in Corralito escape the food-and-water-borne disease. President Attila or May?

To state the obvious to Major Variola, CDC will have first indication of a devastating US attack, reported fragmentarily under its links to hospitals, clinics and physicians, against which the might military and law enforcement have no defenses. By time the attack is understood it will be too late to mount a national defense. Food and water are the means and methods, not the hardware and electronic infrastructure, seaports and airports, so loudly warned about. The last terrorist attack is not the next one. Elderly and children first to show the signs. Those not watched all that carefully by the big warfighters, indeed overlooked by design, so disdainful are they of caregivers.