  The hydrodynamic (hydro) model has been extensively applied to heavy ion data
from the relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC). Results are interpreted to
conclude that a dense QCD medium nearly opaque to most partons, a
strongly-coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP), is formed in more-central Au-Au
collisions. The sQGP may have a very small viscosity (``perfect liquid'').
  However, other analysis methods provide contradictory evidence. Two-component
analysis of single-particle hadron spectra reveals a spectrum hard component
consistent with a parton fragment distribution described by pQCD which can
masquerade as ``radial flow'' in some hydro-motivated analysis. Minimum-bias
angular correlations reveal that a large number of back-to-back jets from
initial-state scattered partons with energies as low as 3 GeV survive as
``minijet'' hadron correlations even in central Au-Au collisions, suggesting
near transparency to partons.
  In this talk I present methods by which almost all spectrum and correlation
structure, even in the most-central Au-Au collisions at 200 GeV, can be
described quantitatively by pQCD calculations. The evolution of nuclear
collisions is apparently dominated by parton scattering and fragmentation even
in the most-central A-A collisions, albeit the fragmentation process is
strongly modified.
