Are We Already At War With Iran ?

Some of you may be shocked at my title question. After all, hasn't the president done all that he can to avoid war with Iran? Hasn't he joined with the European countries to put economic pressure on Iran, in an effort to avoid attacking them? Well yes, he has done that -- but that may just be a cover for the much more aggressive actions this country has initiated.

We already know about the American rocket that killed civilians in Iran. According to the government, that rocket was meant to explode in Iraq and just went awry. And then there's the matter of the drones we have been sending over Iran. One of them was actually shot down by the Iranians, so we can't deny doing that anymore. Again, the official story is that they just got off course.

But there is another matter that is even more serious -- an intentional attack on Iranian property by the United States government. The attack tool is called "Stuxnet". It's a computer "worm" created by the United States (and Israel) to wreak havoc on the Iranian government's computers. It was first discovered when a screw-up in the program sent the worm around the world instead of just to Iran's computer system. And it's been going on for years now.

The cyber-attacks were started by the Bush administration, but President Obama made the decision to continue, and even increase, them after he took office. The attack was a unilateral one, and another example of the United State's policy of "preventative war" -- a Bush doctrine that seems to have been adopted by President Obama.

This brings up a valid question. Isn't an attack on another country's computer system an act of war? If another country were to attack our own government's computers, you can bet our government would consider it an act of war (just as surely as if they had attacked one of our ships or airplanes or military bases). And we would retaliate.

Ask yourself what the United States would do if Iran killed American citizens with a missile, sent drones over U.S. territory, or launched a cyber-attack on our nation's computer system? You know the answer. At the very least the U.S. would bomb the hell out of Iran, and it very well could lead to all-out war.

Too many Americans will deny it (because they believe the U.S. can do no wrong), but our government has already launched the first strikes against Iran. The only reason we are not already in a shooting war is that Iran is showing remarkable restraint (and good sense). Perhaps they know we are trying hard to prod them into responding, so we'll have an excuse to launch our bombers.

2007 Is Record Year For Cyber-Viruses

Here's a bit of bad news for those of us who love to "surf" the internet. It seems that the number of computer viruses (viruses, trojans, worms, etc.) that have been detected now is over one million, according to the security firm Symantec.

In the latest edition of their Internet Security Threat Report, Symantec reports that 1,122,311 different computer viruses or other malware have been detected, and the problem is growing exponentially. Nearly two thirds of these programs (711,912) were created in 2007.

These programs are no longer just created by some teenage computer geek with a twisted sense of humor or a grudge against the world. Most of them are created now by cyber-criminals who are out to steal whatever they can -- they're just doing it with a computer instead of a gun now.

The vast majority of these insidious programs are still aimed at PCs running Microsoft Windows. If this rate of growth continues (and there's no reason to believe it won't), there will easily be over 2 million of the programs by the end of 2008.

Those are some pretty scary statistics.