I want to be straightforward here because I respect you: I don't find this line of discussion very interesting and it's unlikely you'll get much substantive con

I want to be straightforward here because I respect you: I don't find this line of discussion very interesting and it's unlikely you'll get much substantive conversation back from me, though I may try. Mostly this is because I think this entire branch of conversation, as interesting it could otherwise be, seems orthogonal to the point and the claim. I don't want to get too far from the main claim and the discussions from the grandparents. I would not argue that intelligence operations 'ended' the cold war - nor that it was just intelligence that won it. They had an important role in winning the war - by that I mean the cold war was an intelligence war as much as a diplomacy war and an arms war and a proxy war. It's like saying that the intelligence services had a role to play winning WWII. They did. The war wasn't won solely by intelligence. In any case, as you can tell, not an interesting conversation or point - it's mundane. Factoring out whether someone thinks that Stratfor actually provides something of value to the US government or is mostly a place to couch retired generals who have too many secrets to let loose into the private sector it stands that independent of Stratfor, CANVAS was involved in starting colored revolutions and is today involved in trying to kindle revolution in Venezuela - in those same links for example are documents from 2012 providing analysis about how to do that that reflect very accurately the mobilization and activities happening today (getting students to protest, support for Leopoldo, etc). What's more, there's far more than CANVAS that the US government uses to accomplish these things. So if you'll allow me to exit what I'd like to leave while bowing out is that Stratfor's record of efficiency doesn't matter so much - we're only barely talking about Stratfor.