So is your contention, that anytime any character, A, who would plot revenge is forced to be present with another character, B, who killed someone who A loved, it is inconsistent that A would not always kill B? I don't agree. Yes, starting with a sliver of experience and truth is a good thing, but not all such interactions would lead to revenge murder. That is why it isn't an inconsistency: just because a character is capable of it and willing to do it, and just because it might happen in these circumstances, it is not required to happen. That is why I posed the hypothetical of the "vow". With a vow there would be an inconsistency if the conditions of the vow were met, but the vow wasn't carried out. And I agree, for pure effectiveness Garak wouldn't make a public vow if it would decrease his chance of succeeding, it was just a hypothetical - Kira, however, would make a vow cause she doesn't "give a damn" about what others think.
First, please point to any point where I was passive aggressive or sarcastic. I straight up asked a question of 'so what if their intel agencies weren't wiped out?' and argued that they were severely damaged. That is neither passive aggressive or sarcastic. But getting back to the real point...
At no point did I claim that I "believe that all the leaders of each agency were in the fleet". I said that some additional leaders must have been in the fleet, to command the other ships, and some were lost to assassinations preceding the attack. The loss of a lot of agents and some senior leadership significantly impaired the agencies going forward.
And you don't have much support for claiming the plan was not a "grand plan". It wasn't the Dominion's entire strategy for the alpha quadrant, but the Founder certainly considered it an effective way to eliminate two rival powers, and Tain and Garak seemed impressed by it. And as I have pointed out, Cardassia was never a threat to the Dominion after that point, so it appears to have been effective on them. That can't be disputed.
No it is not my contention that character A would always kill character B for revenge. It's my contention that Kira and Garek would Kill Damar based on the character traits built throughout the show. I stated you were being slightly passive aggressive and sarcastic, which you was with the "so what" sentence. It didn't bother me, I just thought you may like to know you are coming across this way. I'm quite enjoying the blog. There would of been plenty of leaders in both agencies left back in the Alpha Quadrant. And, again we know both agencies survive, albeit the order eventually falls, but the Romulans rebuild.
It can be disputed, the founders did not know of the Tain's plan to rid the threat from the Gamma quadrant. They come across the plan and aid it along. You cannot say Cardassia was not a threat to the dominion after the die is cast, they still had their military and the civilian movement had been gaining ground on the central command for years, which gave the Klingons an opportunity to do what they were born to do, fight. This is what weakened the Cardassians, that was another opportunity that the founders did not engineer, but monopolised and were most likely hoping for, the paranoia of the solids.