For most Americans, last week's media diet of American war planes blasting off from carriers into the inky blackness of the Arabian Sea, paired with the upbeat assessments of the air campaign in Afghanistan by the Bush Administration, bolstered spirits. The waiting was at last over and the battle against global terrorism had finally been joined.

All of this did little to alter the air of cool detachment of the operatives at Stratfor, a private, for-profit intelligence outfit that operates out of nondescript offices in Austin,...