I needed a way to step outside "my" way of doing analysis - talking to Marc has helped me out allot. However, now it makes my head hurt since I can't just take the "well - its what I would have done if I were them" approach out of hand. Funny, the longer I stay here, the less I think I understand why some of this stuff happens (its why I responded to the thread ref. the memo from Mahdi leadership). Its hard to sort random decision from planned decision in many cases. Its difficult to make connections about one act to another act unless its either obvious (ex. everything happens at roughly the same time, on roughly the same types of targets, to achieve a roughly the same effects). We spent a day one tie trying to figure out if the guy the IA found stuffed in a rice bag was just an IED gone bad for the emplacer who was being taken back home, or he was somebody killed in manner that allowed him to be stuffed in a rice bag (there is no Iraqi CSI and once a guy is in a rice bag (maybe a 3 ft x 18 in bag), nobody really wants to dump him out to "examine" him).

Connecting one thing to another can lead to some bad assumptions. Assuming motivations are tied to your motivations can also be deadly. While I have not "figured it out", Marc's and the SWC members comments cause me to reconsider first assuptions and challenge them. I always liked Johnathan Hume, the Scottish philosopher who once remarked (paraphrased) that he had to drink beer while he played billiards because else he'd get to caught up in the physics of the blliard balls and get a headache. Currently I need a beer or two myself, but its still about 6 weeks out