The Navy is deploying Swift Boats to Iraq. They’d better stay out of Cambodia, though.

What Democrats were saying in Iraq before everything became George Bush’s fault and he “lied us into war.”

For the desktop OS?

“We are involved in a number of massive deals for Linux desktops, and those are the kinds of things that are indicators of critical mass. So we are really looking at it very hard,” said Doug Small, worldwide director of open source and Linux marketing at HP. “We are in a massive deal right now for … multi-thousands of units of a desktop opportunity for Linux. That’s an indicator.” He declined to give details about the Linux deals.

This, combined with the fact that Dell is now shipping Linux laptops, is an ominous omen for Redmond.

I think that Vista may have been a bridge too far for Microsoft. Windows has been an entrenched technology for well over a decade now (and MS operating systems in general for well over two). As long as the cost of switching over remains high in terms of user retraining, it’s hard for a newcomer to make much headway. But if the cost of continued use grows as well, and the benefits of the new technology start to become overwhelming, even the most entrenched technology can still lose out, when the curves cross over.

I’ve been fortunate enough not to have had to try Vista yet, but here’s an amusing parable.

Of course, it’s still an uphill battle until a standard GUI can be established, but I think that the Gnome/KDE wars continue.

…on that defecting Iranian general:

According to the report, the missing Iranian general was carrying documents and maps of Iran’s military and intelligence infrastructure as well as information regarding the relations between the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hizbullah and the Islamic Jihad.

In addition, the general was reported to possess information regarding the Iranian nuclear program as well as information about Iran’s strategic military plans.

Emphasis mine. If true, it will make it a lot easier to take out the key facilities at minimal cost and collateral damage.

This appears to be a major break in our struggle with Ahmadinejad and the mullahs. It would be nice if it also presaged a more general rebellion within the ranks, and the populace itself.

[Mid-morning update]

It’s a quagmire! More insurgent attacks. In Iran.

From Lileks:

I drove home listening to Bob Davis on KSTP; he was revisiting one of his favorite topics, one that mirrors exactly something I

When you sit in front of monitors and maps showing countless trajectories from Lebanon into Israel — into the very places your friends and family live — it can be quite agitating. Some of us were becoming very impatient, and in the many dead moments there were debates whether our response should be harsher. Of course, none of us were in any position of real influence. It was somewhat of a relief when the ground offensive was escalated, even though virtually everyone had people who were very close to them in combat units. I had some very tense conversations with people who were about to enter Lebanon, trying to prepare them without letting out really sensitive information. Talking to friends and family back home sometimes proved difficult because they would ask questions I could not answer — either because I did not know the answer or because it was sensitive. Even today there are some very basic facts about the conflict that I would like the entire world to know, but divulging them would mean that we’ll have poorer intelligence in the next round.

An excerpt from a long but fascinating (at least to me) interview with an IDF officer, by Michael Totten.

[Update a few minutes later]

Meanwhile, Europe has a serious Israel problem. I think this is right:

Perhaps the best explanation, then, is one given by Stephan Vopel of the German Bertelsmann Foundation for why many more Americans and Israelis favor a military strike against Iran than Germans: “While Israelis subscribe to the maxim ‘never again,’ the German dictum is ‘never again war.'” Pacifism, in other words, is the driving force behind European animus toward both the US and Israel.

Yes, it’s easy to be a pacifist, when you’ve had someone else subsidizing your defense for decades.

When you sit in front of monitors and maps showing countless trajectories from Lebanon into Israel — into the very places your friends and family live — it can be quite agitating. Some of us were becoming very impatient, and in the many dead moments there were debates whether our response should be harsher. Of course, none of us were in any position of real influence. It was somewhat of a relief when the ground offensive was escalated, even though virtually everyone had people who were very close to them in combat units. I had some very tense conversations with people who were about to enter Lebanon, trying to prepare them without letting out really sensitive information. Talking to friends and family back home sometimes proved difficult because they would ask questions I could not answer — either because I did not know the answer or because it was sensitive. Even today there are some very basic facts about the conflict that I would like the entire world to know, but divulging them would mean that we’ll have poorer intelligence in the next round.

An excerpt from a long but fascinating (at least to me) interview with an IDF officer, by Michael Totten.

[Update a few minutes later]

Meanwhile, Europe has a serious Israel problem. I think this is right:

Perhaps the best explanation, then, is one given by Stephan Vopel of the German Bertelsmann Foundation for why many more Americans and Israelis favor a military strike against Iran than Germans: “While Israelis subscribe to the maxim ‘never again,’ the German dictum is ‘never again war.'” Pacifism, in other words, is the driving force behind European animus toward both the US and Israel.

Yes, it’s easy to be a pacifist, when you’ve had someone else subsidizing your defense for decades.

When you sit in front of monitors and maps showing countless trajectories from Lebanon into Israel — into the very places your friends and family live — it can be quite agitating. Some of us were becoming very impatient, and in the many dead moments there were debates whether our response should be harsher. Of course, none of us were in any position of real influence. It was somewhat of a relief when the ground offensive was escalated, even though virtually everyone had people who were very close to them in combat units. I had some very tense conversations with people who were about to enter Lebanon, trying to prepare them without letting out really sensitive information. Talking to friends and family back home sometimes proved difficult because they would ask questions I could not answer — either because I did not know the answer or because it was sensitive. Even today there are some very basic facts about the conflict that I would like the entire world to know, but divulging them would mean that we’ll have poorer intelligence in the next round.

An excerpt from a long but fascinating (at least to me) interview with an IDF officer, by Michael Totten.

[Update a few minutes later]

Meanwhile, Europe has a serious Israel problem. I think this is right:

Perhaps the best explanation, then, is one given by Stephan Vopel of the German Bertelsmann Foundation for why many more Americans and Israelis favor a military strike against Iran than Germans: “While Israelis subscribe to the maxim ‘never again,’ the German dictum is ‘never again war.'” Pacifism, in other words, is the driving force behind European animus toward both the US and Israel.

Yes, it’s easy to be a pacifist, when you’ve had someone else subsidizing your defense for decades.

This seems like good news, especially if it’s a defection.

From Iraqpundit:

Are my aunt and her neighbors kidding themselves out of desperation? That’s possible; it’s hard to live without hope, and people can be creative at manufacturing reasons to be optimistic. (Though the truth is that Iraqis are not, as a rule, an optimistic group, and are inclined by cultural habit to see things darkly. But that’s another story.) It’s true that the murderers in Iraq are still at work. On the other hand, I’m far more inclined to take seriously a picture of Baghdad that comes from a life-long Baghdadi than one coming from a Westerner who has parachuted into town for a while, and who doesn’t speak the language.

Yet Iraqis who desperately want to lead normal lives are not the only ones with an incentive to interpret events in their own interests. If one listens to the usual suspects among certain journalists, academics, and politicians, the ongoing crackdown is futile and doomed to fail. But that’s a conclusion that many of these figures reached even before the security sweep began. In other words, some of the crackdown’s critics have created incentives, professional and personal, to perceive Iraqi and American failure. People can be creative at manufacturing reasons to be pessimistic, too.