The colonel was just back from Iraq when we met with him in the fall of 2005. He spoke in the blunt way of a soldier who had served 25 years in elite secret units. He had been in plenty of precarious situations and had the battle scars to show for it. The special operations unit he commanded knew…

SINCE 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly declared that the United States is in a new kind of war, one requiring new military forces to hunt down and capture or kill terrorists. In fact, for some years, the Department of Defense has gone to the trouble of selecting and…