Three nightmare wars haunt country's future; U.S. isn't ready for possible tactics in conflicts to come

Abstract

The recently sacked secretary of defense dozed in his study after a hearty Christmas Eve dinner, with only a vague sense of unease that failures of the present might lead to catastrophes of the future. He, like all of us, had been too busy trying to contain today's disasters to worry much about tomorrow's. But unprepared as he was for the ghosts of wars to come, into his sleep they crept -- one by one by one