It's Iraq, Dummy!

Have you wondered WHY the United States hasn't been hit by al Qaeda since 9/11/2001? It's Iraq, Dummy! We are being hit hard and often in that miserable bit of hell on earth. In fact, to paraphrase the late Bernard Fall, our forces are caught in hell in a hot and dusty place. In the meantime, W prattles on about bringing democracy to Iraq. Hell, we cannot bring law and order (in Texas, it's lawn order) to Iraq, let alone find Osama bin Laden. Nor can we find Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—the alleged mastermind of the Iraqi insurgency—in Fallujah (or anywhere else). Our war on terrorism more closely resembles a Keystone Kops farce. In the meantime, good young people are falling in that hellish, hot, and dusty place. It is time to tell W: ¡Basta Ya! !No mas! If this is (fair & balanced) outrage and despair, so be it.

[x AFP]
Iraq now an Al-Qaeda battleground, British report says

LONDON (AFP) - The US-led coalition's failure to restore security has turned Iraq (news - web sites) into a battleground for the likes of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, a British parliamentary committee said.

In a major report on the war on terrorism, the House of Commons foreign affairs committee said the lack of law and order had created a "vacuum" for criminals and militias, with "appalling consequences" for the Iraqi people.

It added that Iraq's own police and armed forces are still "a long way from being able to maintain security," and warned that ongoing violence could mar elections planned for early next year.

"We conclude that the violence in Iraq stems from a number of sources, including members of the former regime, local Islamists, criminal gangs and Al-Qaeda," the committee said.

"Iraq has become a 'battleground' for Al-Qaeda, with appalling consequences for the Iraqi people," it added.

"However, we also conclude that the coalition's failure to bring law and order to parts of Iraq created a vacuum into which criminal elements and militias have stepped," it said.

It blamed an "insufficient number of troops" for contributing to the breakdown in security, adding that it was "disappointing" that some countries -- which it did not name -- had not committed forces to Iraq.

"It is therefore of the utmost importance that current problems are resolved in favour of the forces of order and that those who seek to impede Iraq's transition to a free and democratic state are defeated."

The 181-page report was published by the 13-member cross-party committee a month and a day after the June 28 handover of sovereignty to a interim Iraqi administration in Baghdad.

It also came just a day after a suicide bombing outside a police station and a wave of attacks around the Iraq left more than 120 dead.

Titled "Foreign Policy Aspects of the War Against Terrorism," the report was likely to give fresh ammunition to critics of Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s decision to join the US invasion of Iraq in March last year.

"No one can pretend that everything in the country is going well," Donald Anderson, a member of Blair's governing Labour party who chairs the foreign affairs committee, told reporters.

Asked whether the Iraq war had increased the threat of terrorism, Anderson replied: "Clearly there are elements of Al-Qaeda that are there that were not there before."

Echoing the current view of Blair's government, the report said Al-Qaeda remains "a very serious threat" both to Britain and its interests.

Blair is on holiday outside Britain this week, but he has been hoping that Iraq will fade from the public spotlight as his governing Labour party gears up for a general election likely to be held next year.

On the way forward in Iraq, the foreign affairs committee's report said it was "highly desirable that elections proceed on schedule" to foster confidence in Iraq's move towards democracy.

"However, we are concerned about the impact that the security situation could have on the validity of the election process," it said.

It asked British government to explain what plans it has, both with Iraq and with the United Nations, to beef up security for the polls, due to take place before the end of January.

"We further recommend that the government encourage states that remain reluctant to commit troops to counter-insurgency operations in Iraq to send forces to assist with the elections."

Copyright © 2004 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.

I Can't Phish Or Cut Bait

Uh, oh. I scored 40% (4 correct out of 10) at the Testing Your Phishing IQ site. Back in early 2000, I fell for a phishing fraud involving my Internet Service Provider at the time. I received an e-mail message with the logo and the look of e-mail from that ISP. Under the pretext of updating my records, I filled the boxes with my Social Security Number, mailing address, telephone number, and my credit card (VISA) information—number and expiration date. Duh! The hoax made the Amarillo fishwrap with the report that only one ISP customer had fallen for the request and spilled his cyberguts to the phisherman. Obviously, the sole rube in Amarillo was me. If this is (fair & balanced) humiliation, so be it.

[x PC Magazine]
Can You Sniff Out Fraud?
By Neil J. Rubenking

Phishing scams are on the rise. These fraudulent e-mail messages trick recipients into giving out sensitive information by imitating legitimate sites–PayPal, eBay, banks, or credit card companies. When you click a link to "verify" or "confirm" sensitive data like your bank-account numbers, the page looks legitimate. The browser may even display the secure-site lock icon. But your data goes to a crook, not to the bank. The scammer only needs a handful of dupes to make it profitable. By the time any investigation can take place, he's long gone.

You wouldn't be taken in by such a scam… or would you? Antispam vendor MailFrontier thinks you would. MailFrontier's desktop and enterprise products filter phishing scams separately from other spam, placing them in their own fraud-mail folder. The user can mark a message in this folder as legitimate, thereby moving it back to the inbox. MailFrontier experts observed that nearly ten percent of the mail unequivocally identified as suspicious was being rescued by users!

MailFrontier commissioned an independent survey in which 1,000 adults around the country were presented with screenshots of five e-mail messages and asked to identify them as legitimate or fraudulent. Two of them were actually frauds, including a well-known PayPal scam. On average, 28% of the responses incorrectly identified fraudulent e-mail as legitimate, or vice versa.

So, how would you have fared in the survey? You can find out at www.mailfrontier.com. When you click on the Test your Phishing IQ link, you'll get a chance to analyze ten actual e-mail messages and distinguish the legitimate from the fraudulent. Unlike the earlier survey, which used static screen shots, this test lets you scroll through the messages, hover the mouse over links, and do almost anything but follow the links. When you've made your decisions, submit them and find out which were correct.

Social-engineering exploits like phishing may eventually be the biggest threat to online security. Even if antispam, antivirus, and antispyware programs evolve to be 100% accurate in identifying threats, the uninformed user can still stumble around them.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.