In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the world witnessed a progress report on the revolution in military affairs (RMA). The performance of US forces in the major combat phase of the operation in Iraq demonstrated the ability of institutions functioning within standard bureaucratic, hierarchical structures to operate beyond those structures.

To put it bluntly, US forces in Iraq leapt past jointness into networked operating models.

The war on terror is frustrating and confusing.

A college classmate of mine, someone who knows I am a retired CIA operations officer, recently expressed to me his frustration with the pace of the war on terror.

Our current war on terror is by no means the first such war our nation has fought, and our interrogation efforts against terrorist suspects in the United States, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay are (hopefully) based on lessons learned from the experiences of past decades.

(Editor's note: The authors intend this article to provoke a broad discussion of the role of intelligence in a constitutional republic during an era of accelerating change and terrible new dangers.)

Over the past decade, commission upon commission has urged reform of the loose confederation that is the US Intelligence Community. Opposed by implacable champions of the status quo, precious few of these commissions have provoked meaningful change.

This is a paper about decisions that must be made now. The problems we face are immediate and compelling. If we cannot identify effective responses to these challenges now, the shape of the future will evolve in ever more dangerous and unknown directions.

How can we improve the nation's spy agencies?

By concentrating on the basics and building the capabilities we need to defeat today's threats.

Commissions often have the opposite of their intended effect -- they stall reforms rather than facilitate them.

Creating czars, rearranging organizations, and assigning new authorities are all tempting. Alas, all these proposals may seem reasonable, but none of them address the most important problem facing US intelligence.

... we can expect another round of proposals to reorganize US intelligence agencies ... They deserve serious consideration and, in some cases, prompt action.

There is, however, at least one really bad idea: reviving the old standby suggestion of creating a director of National Intelligence. On the surface the approach may look logical, but the reality in Washington would be a far different scenario.

Recent studies have shown that less than 5% of American adults have learned to think fluently in modern non-story forms.

In order to be completely enfranchised in the 21st century, it will be very important for children to get fluent in the three central forms of thinking that are now in use: "stories", "logical arguments", and "systems dynamics".

The question is: "how?"

A good rule of thumb for curriculum design is to aim at being idea based, not media based.

Often, computers in the classroom are technology as a kind of junk food -- people love it but there is no nutrition to speak of.

Television has become America's mass medium, and it is a very poor container for powerful ideas.

Schools are very likely the last line of defence in the global trivialization of knowledge -- yet it appears that they have not yet learned enough about the new technologies and media to make the important distinctions between formal but meaningless activities with computers and networks and the fluencies needed for real 21st century thinking.

We can't learn to see until we realize we are blind.

The CIA screwed up. That's the ho-hum summation of the Senate Intelligence Committee's 512-page report, released with fanfare after a 12-month inquiry.

The report uncorks a geyser of detail about the agency's failures but keeps the two most important questions of the day bottled up: Did the CIA's mistakes, especially about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, stem from political pressures? And what can be done to improve the agency's handling of warnings and threats now?

As for the second question, how to repair the CIA after the nation's biggest intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor, both the Republican chairman Pat Roberts and ranking Democrat John Rockefeller cleared their throats forthrightly.

One can take two approaches to renovating School -- or indeed anything else.

The problem-solving approach identifies the many problems that afflict individual schools and tries to solve them.

A systemic approach requires one to step back from the immediate problems and develop an understanding of how the whole thing works.

Educators faced with day-to-day operation of schools are forced by circumstances to rely on problem solving for local fixes. They do not have time for "big ideas."

This essay offers a big idea in a reflexive way: the most neglected big idea is the very idea of bigness of ideas.

In brief, when ideas go to school they lose their power, thus creating a challenge for those who would improve learning to find ways to re-empower them. This need not be so.

In remarks published in the al-Hayat newspaper, Allawi was quoted as saying Iraqi forces have arrested al-Qaida operatives and is seeing increasing coordination between Osama bin Laden's terror network and Saddam loyalists.

He said those arrested included the driver of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is accused of attacks and kidnappings in Iraq and elsewhere.