I received three friend requests on MySpace this morning. The models in the profile pics are a dead giveaway that the profiles belong to spammers. Most of the time I simply ignore these friend requests, but this morning I decided to see what the assholes were up to this time. The profiles themselves are covered with a large image that says “This profile is securely protected. Click here to download FREE myspace viewer”. Clicking the image links to a malicious executable.
This kind of thing doesn’t fool me, but it likely fools a lot of people. This is what we in the computer industry call “social engineering”: fooling people (in this case, horny boys) into installing malicious software.
(Click the thumbnail to see a full-size screenshot.)
“I am not young enough to know everything.” — Oscar Wilde
Political correctness has essentially doomed our project in Iraq. Our efforts to claim the moral high ground by including everyone in the political process hasn’t reformed the bad guys. It has only enabled them.
Our basic mistake was to assume that political factions in Iraq were essentially the same as political factions at home: (mostly) good people who just have differing opinions. We assumed that all factions in Iraq would put aside their own interests and hatreds and work together to build a new Iraq, if only given the chance.
Indeed there are good people in Iraq. Most of them are good. But there are also evil thugs who would love nothing more than to be the next Saddam. Assuming that the thugs could be reformed by participation in democracy was our single biggest mistake of the occupation. Frankly, it’s a mistake from which we may not be able to recover.
It isn’t politically correct to recognize thugs for what they are: Evil and Unreformable. Yet, the mess we find ourselves in clearly demonstrates that thugs cannot be expected to reform. Of course, facing that fact is also not politically correct.
The only way out of this mess that I see is highly politically incorrect: the thugs need killin’. I humbly propose the following solutions:
- Kill al-Sadr. I don’t give a shit whether he’s part of the government or not.
- Then kill any other government minister who doesn’t disband their personal militias immediately.
- Shoot any militiaman on sight, regardless of affiliation.
- Summarily execute any unauthorized person caught wearing an Iraqi police or army uniform. No arrest. No trial.
- Summarily execute any policeman or soldier found to be affiliated with insurgents or militias.
- Flatten any city that rises in rebellion. Do not tolerate another Fallujah.
- Immediately retake any city that falls to a militia — especially in the southern part of the country.
Brutal and nasty? Yes. A violation of the Iraqi government’s sovereignty? Yup. Overreaction? No, because the current “feel good”, politically correct approach sure as hell hasn’t worked.
So, in a way, I have to agree with the leftists: the occupation has been totally fucked up. But invading was still the right decision.
My own opinion about the drubbing the Republicans received last night:
It was well deserved. Was it a referendum on Iraq? Partly. But more importantly, the Republicans had abandoned their principles of limited government and fiscal discipline. Instead, they embraced pork, entitlement, and corruption. They’re now paying for it.
I just wish I could say that the Democrats might be better.
Today’s New York Times clearly admits that Saddam had the knowledge to build an atom bomb. (Original article here, via Drudge Report. Article reproduced here.)
Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
Despite the expected anti-Bush spin, this pretty much destroys the “Bush Lied” meme, doesn’t it?
It’s pretty obvious that if Saddam had been left alone, the sanctions and controls imposed on him after the Gulf War would have come to an end. (They were already falling apart by 2003, thanks in no small part to certain European powers.) Once sanctions were gone, he would then have been free to restart his weapons programs — or sell his knowledge to interested third parties, such as Al-Qaida.
