FROM AN EMBARRASSMENT TO A CATASTROPHE

Bit by bit we are getting to the inevitable showdown with Iran. This administration, like every other Western government, has hoped against hope that it would not come to this.

President George W. Bush, for reasons good and bad, threw in with the Europeans’ phony-negotiation scheme, even though he knew it would fail. Like the others, he hoped that revolution would erupt, and that decisive action on our part would not be necessary.

Like the others, he preferred not to face the hard fact that revolutions rarely succeed without external support. Had Ronald Reagan been around, he would have told (more…)

DOES AL GORE WANT OSAMA BIN LADEN TO SUCCEED?

In an audiotape broadcast Thursday on al Jazeera, Osama bin Laden said al Qaeda is preparing to strike the United States again.

Last month Italian authorities arrested three Algerians with al Qaeda connections. They were plotting attacks on ships, railway stations and stadiums in the United States, said Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu.

Some Democrats think President Bush should be impeached for trying to keep them from succeeding.

In a speech Monday remarkable (even for him) for its bombast and hypocrisy, former Vice President Al Gore accused the president of having violated the law when he authorized the National Security Agency (more…)

MAY THE CORE FORCE BE WITH YOU

I’m far more restrained than many experts who see security problems getting worse, not better, even though new, better and more powerful security tools are being developed all the time.

But, like modern government, Windows is not going anywhere. To expect masses of computer users to pick up and move en masse to other operating systems like Linux is unrealistic; Microsoft’s domination of operating systems and Windows software is too entrenched, and most people have enough to do without reorienting their computing skills, too.

In any case, competing operating systems have their own security problems. The greater their market share (more…)

THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL LUNATIC THUG

The good news is we’re unlikely to be as obsessed with the war in Iraq in 2006 as we were in 2005. The bad news is we may soon have much more to worry about.

Mahmoud Amadinejad is the president of Iran, picked by the aging mullahs of the Guardian Council who hold the real power in the land. Since his election last August, Mr. Amadinejad has been replacing elderly clerics in senior government positions with colleagues from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Iranian version of the Nazi SS, which he once commanded.

Mr. Amadinejad is a thug. He (more…)

IMAGE ANGST

“The latest Service Pack for Windows XP – Service Pack 2 (SP2) – is all about security.” So began the blurb Microsoft sent out in 2004 urging users to install their latest security innovation.

Tired of ever-repeating mini-scandals in which hackers discovered security holes in Windows that could be exploited by viruses, the company developed a “super secure” package for Windows XP that would make it nigh impossible for pimply faced kids to remotely take over your machine for their nefarious slacker purposes.

And it worked, at least for a while. Microsoft has scrupulously updated SP2, issuing patches on a (more…)

WHO’S AN IRAQI?

First, a news bulletin:

According to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden gave the world the most marvelous Christmas present he could possibly give by departing from it in mid-December. The Al Qaeda leader died of kidney failure and was buried in Iran, where he had spent most of his time since the destruction of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Iranians who reported this note that this year’s message in conjunction with the Moslem Haj came from his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, for the first time.

Now on to the subject at hand.

Of all the confusions surrounding the war (more…)