This will require first-rate intelligence, shrewd diplomacy and a continued extensive military commitment.
"A first-rate intelligence," my father would say, "is one on which nothing is lost".
F Scott Fitzgerald said that the test of a first-rate intelligence was the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind and still be able to function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function".
First-rate intelligence reporters like the Times' James Risen, the Post's Dana Priest, and this magazine's Jane Mayer aren't just a pain in the ass, in his view — they have low motives and unfair agendas.
Fitzgerald opens with the characteristically brilliant observation that "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function".
The disgruntlement also allowed men like Velimir Ilic, the mayor of the central Serbian town of Cacak and a particularly blunt opposition leader, to recruit successfully within the police and army and gain first-rate intelligence on police activities.
The test, writes Fitzgerald, in an essay called "The Crack-Up," of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold opposing ideas in the mind at the same time yet retain the ability to function.
Harvard's John Kenneth Galbraith, who befriended him, believed he had a "a first-rate intelligence" that gave him "a margin of mental advantage over the run-of-the-mill members" of Congress.
In his 1965 book on Vietnam, "The Making of a Quagmire," Halberstam described An as the linchpin of "a small but first-rate intelligence network" of journalists and writers.
