"Celt" Conjecture

[Rumo]

but the "Kelt" name was known to Greeks for several centuries

That would seem to me to be a point in favor of the name, not an argument against it.

So you're suggesting Caesar heard in Gaul the authentic name of the 'Celtae', which happened to be exactly the same name (*kelt-) the Greeks gathered from some other tribesmen some 4-5 centuries before? Was there a persistent, pan-European Celthood spanning from Atlantic to Asia Minor, lasting from the age of Herodotus to Caesar's time in which all its members identified themselves as Celts, so that each author writing about them in Greek or Latin could rightfully maintain this name? Or was there just an amazing coincidence, that all Romans and Greeks happened to interrogate the same tribe and they always came up with the same name?

How many American politicians know the ethnographic map of Iraq?

Probably not many. But surely you don't think the generals in charge are lacking in cultural understanding, do you? It's their very business to know things like that.[/quote]
I'd rather believe most generals are similarly ignorant, because ethnography is useless to them just for the sake of it. I also don't see how can they get reliable ethnographic data, unless they would set foot in the villages they are bombing, which I really doubt they'd do. Just to keep things at the surface, can you a name one American general who can speak Iraqi Arabic, Kurdish, Neo-Aramaic and Azeri Turkish (just to name the four most important local languages in Iraq)?