Kaplan writes: "It's bad enough that so many foreigners believe in the omniscience of U.S. intelligence agencies; it's appalling that a presidential candidate seems to believe such sci-fi fantasies, too." It's unclear which "many" he's referring to: Our allies, who believe our intelligence without being more critical of it, or our enemies, who assume we are much smarter than we are. At the moment, I doubt you can find any of our allies who swallow our intelligence reports hook, line and sinker. And as for our enemies, it's actually a great benefit if they do believe we are all-knowing, as it acts as a deterrent and gives us an edge.

It is hardly likely that are enemies are any less stupid than our allies. We lost all credibility two days after the fall of Baghdad when we sat back and allowed looters to haul off everything that they could carry. Rumsfeld said it was deomcracy in action and stuff happens. It has been all downhill from there.

Our allies generally have their own intelligence services, and don't have any need or inclination to rely solely on ours. In fact, some of our allies use their intelligence services to spy on us almost as much as anywhere that's percieved as a threat (Mosad has been caught operating in the USA, and French industrial espionage is known to be widespread in certain sectors to name two).

In the case of Iraqi WMD's, even the intelligence services of allies who opposed our actions were fairly certain that the weapons in question existed, based on information collected by their own services.

For the record, the looting which took place after the fall of Baghdad has been widely overreported. And the "thousands of antiquities" taken from the museums were less than 200, and most have since been recovered. The reality is that most of the antiquities in the museums are simply too massive and heavy to lift. Hey: did Iraqis loot Saddam's palaces? Good for them.

Nonetheless, I sure don't think it was the looting which has ruined our credibility. Abu Graib and the current chaos hasn't helped too much.