This Cox & Forkum cartoon captures the situation perfectly.

UPDATE: Donald Rumsfeld made a surprise Christmas Eve visit to U.S. troops in Mosul.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited wounded soldiers and brought holiday greetings on Christmas Eve amid tight security at an air base in northern Iraq where an insurgent’s attack killed 14 U.S. troops and eight other people earlier this week.

UPDATE II: Here’s more on Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to Mosul. (From Power Line)

Are American soldiers doing the Lord’s work in Iraq? Brendan Miniter thinks so.

Uh-oh! Looks like there’s more hype about Firefox. The New York Times has an article with a very favorable assessment of Firefox’s chances to re-ignite the “browser wars.”

Gary Schare, Microsoft’s director of product management for Windows, has been assigned the unenviable task of explaining how Microsoft plans to respond to the Firefox challenge with a product whose features were last updated three years ago. He has said that current users of Internet Explorer will stick with it once they take into account “all the factors that led them to choose I.E. in the first place.” Beg your pardon. Choose? Doesn’t I.E. come bundled with Windows?

Mr. Schare has said that Mozilla’s Firefox must prove it can smoothly move from version 1.0 to 2.0, and has thus far enjoyed “a bit of a free ride.” If I were the spokesman for the software company that included the company’s browser free on every Windows PC, I’d be more careful about using the phrase “free ride.”

eWeek.com also has an article encouraging Windows users to switch to Firefox for security reasons.

People who don’t get security often say that if Firefox or any other open-source software were only as popular as IE, their security would be just as bad. Nope. Wrong.

First, open-source software is constantly being looked at by numerous developers. When problems are found, and they are all the time, they’re quickly fixed. With Microsoft code, you have to trust that its programmers are on the ball and that they’ll fix problems quickly. You look at their track record and you decide if that’s true. I know what I think.

Second, on Windows, open-source applications are just that: applications. Microsoft programs, by their very nature, are tied directly into the operating system kernel. This means, IE–and other Microsoft Windows applications such as Outlook–enables any security hole to potentially rip open the entire operating system.

Earlier, I linked to an interview with Mr. Schare where he named backwards compatibility as a major reason that Microsoft is not offering updates to Internet Explorer.

We could change the CSS support and many other standards elements within the browser rendering platform. But in doing so, we would also potentially break a lot of things. We have to strike the balance of what’s okay to break and what shouldn’t we break, and how do we roll this out in a way that does a clean break, if you will.

However, some people think Internet Explorer has already broken the web. And I think there is a lot, a whole lot, of merit in these arguments.

Now, Scott Ott has the full details on Microsoft’s latest plans to update IE.

UPDATE: Here’s a contrasting opinion. *[IE]: Internet Explorer

First, on Monday the two Ukrainian presidential rivals faced-off in a televised debate.

The two rivals stood at lecterns facing each other in a blue television studio, with an electronic clock behind a moderator. A small table was between them, with a desktop flag of Ukraine sitting on it.

Yushchenko, wearing a tie and a handkerchief in his campaign color of orange, spoke first. He said the reason for the Dec. 26 election rerun “was that the results of the Nov. 21 votes were stolen … by my opponent and his team.”

Yanukovych, wearing a tie in his trademark blue, spoke in Russian instead of Ukrainian in his introductory remarks.

“Your accusations toward me and toward my voters don’t give us the chance to look into the future optimistically,” he said, wagging his finger at Yushchenko.

Yanukovych suggested that a Yushchenko victory would further divide the nation.

I find it intriguing that Yanukovych would suggest that a victory by Yushchenko in this weekend’s election would divide the nation since it isn’t Yanukovych’s offices that are the targets of violence.

Late Sunday, assailants hurled a firebomb at Yushchenko’s campaign office in the city of Mariupil in the Donetsk region, a statement posted on his party Web site said. There were no injuries, but the office was seriously damaged in an ensuing fire.

But I suppose this is similar to the “staged” violence Republicans perpetrated against Bush-Cheney offices here in the U.S. this past election season. Just trying to gain some sympathy. Well, it worked on me!

Next up, Vladimir Putin seems to have seen the writing on the wall. He now believes he can work with a Yushchenko administration in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who openly backed Viktor Yushchenko’s rival for president of the Ukraine, said Tuesday he could work with an administration headed by the pro-Western candidate.

“We have worked with him already and the cooperation was not bad,” Putin said during a visit to Germany. “If he wins, I don’t see any problems.”

Apparently, this news has not given Yushchenko any warm and fuzzy feelings. Wednesday evening he warned his supporters to expect violence in connection with the election on Sunday.

He told the thousands gathered in the square to mark the one-month anniversary since protests against election fraud began that they had changed Ukraine without bloodshed.

But he warned: “There are some forces preparing disruption and they are preparing brigades, groups which are ready to come to Kiev.”

UPDATE: More on election violence concerns:

In Kiev, rumors are swirling that Cossacks and miners from mainly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine are readying to disrupt Sunday’s vote or head to Kiev in case of a Yushchenko victory.

Campaign officials for Yanukovych, who draws most of his support from eastern Ukraine, have repeatedly denied the allegations. Law enforcement officials have said they would maintain law and order during the rerun.

The attack on FOB Marez was most likely caused by a suicide bomber.

Tuesday’s attack was the deadliest breach of security at a U.S. military base since the Iraq war began. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita said there will be a reassessment of U.S. security procedures as a result. Related: Photos from the scene)

U.S. officials initially reported that rocket or mortar fire had struck the plastic-skinned tent Tuesday at Forward Operating Base Marez. But Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon briefing, “We have had a suicide bomber apparently strap something to his body … and go into a dining hall.”

I expect the blame game will start with the usual suspects (MSM, Dems, anti-war crowd, etc.) blaming Rumsfeld and the Pentagon brass for being unprepared for such a style of attack and demanding an investigation. And an investigation should be launched; it just shouldn’t be politicized. The purpose of any investigation into how a terrorist got into the tent with an IED shouldn’t be to place blame, but to determine what can be done to prevent a future tragedy. Look for old media, though, to put the pressure on to find out who’s to blame, not at looking for ways to prevent a future attack like this one from occurring.

In related news, Donald Rumsfeld expressed grief over the criticism that he has been receiving the past two weeks.

Looking more subdued than during most of his public appearances at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld responded to a barrage of criticism Wednesday by saying he cares deeply about the lives of U.S. troops who go in harm’s way.

One day after 14 U.S. soldiers and four contractors died in a suicide bombing at an Army mess hall near Mosul, Rumsfeld did something he has rarely done in four years on the job: He talked about his feelings.

“I am truly saddened by the thought that anyone could have the impression that I or others here are doing anything other than working urgently to see that the lives of the fighting men and women are protected and cared for in every way humanly possible,” Rumsfeld said. He said he shares “deeply” the loss family members feel when a soldier dies.

Jeff Jacoby highlights ”Voices of Iraq” a documentary that shows Iraq as the citizens of Iraq see it.

“Voices of Iraq” is by turns heartbreaking, exhilarating, and inspiring. The war and its destruction is never far from the surface. One of the opening scenes is of a car bombing in Sadr City, and when a little girl is asked, “What do you want to tell the world about Iraq?” her answer is poignant: “These explosions are hurting everyone.” A mother is seen weeping for her son, killed in the crossfire during a fight between US soldiers and looters. There is even footage – supplied, Drury told NPR, by a sheik from Fallujah – of insurgents preparing a bomb.

But bad as the war is, the horror it ended – Saddam’s 24-year reign – was worse.

In the film, a young Kurdish mother tells her daughter, who is wielding the camcorder, how she would burn herself with cigarettes to prepare for the torture she knew was coming. A policeman recalls what it was like to arrest a member of the Ba’ath Party. “You’d be scared,” he says. “You’d shake with fear.” One man explains that Saddam’s son Uday “used to come often to Ravad Street – every Thursday for the market – to choose a girl to rape.”

A few brief clips are shown from a captured Fedayeen Saddam videotape: A blindfolded victim thrown to his death from a rooftop, a man’s hand getting severed, someone’s tongue being cut out.

It isn’t hard to understand the emotions of the man who answers, when asked how he reacted to the news of Saddam’s capture, “I danced like this! I kept dancing. Then I cried.”

Yet for all they have been through, Iraqis come across as incredibly optimistic, hopeful, and enthusiastic. And above all, normal. In “Voices of Iraq” they film themselves flying on rides in an amusement park, dancing the night away at a graduation party, taking their kids to a playground, shopping for cellphones. A police officer mugs for the camera. Shoppers throng the streets of Suleimaniyah. A scrawny kid pumps iron with a makeshift barbell – and gives a shout out to Arnold Schwarzenegger. (“I like your movies. You’re a good actor. Can you please send me some real weights?”)

The film’s producers distributed 150 digital video cameras to Iraq, and asked ordinary Iraqis to film scenes of daily life in Iraq and then to pass the camera along. It seems that once Western media is out of the way, things in Iraq, while not perfect and certainly still dangerous, don’t seem quite so bleak.

La Shawn Barber provides some background on the smaller blogs which helped to break and spread the Rathergate story.

La Shawn on her blog also shares her motivation for writing the story.

These are the kinds of contributions I had in mind when I wrote the other day that “Bloggers” might have been a better choice for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. (Not that the President isn’t a darn good one.)

Michael Ledeen explains how the left lost its way.

The slow death of the Left was not limited to its failure to comprehend how profoundly the world had changed, but included elements that had been there all along, outside the purview of leftist thought. Marx was famously unable to comprehend the importance of religion, which he dismissively characterized as the “opiate of the masses,” and the Left had long fought against organized religion. But America had remained a religious society, which both baffled and enraged the leftists. On the eve of the 2004 elections, some 40 percent of the electorate consisted of born-again Christians, and the world at large was in the grips of a massive religious revival, yet the increasingly isolated politicians and intellectuals of the Left had little contact and even less understanding of people of faith.

Unable to either understand or transform the world, the Left predictably lost its bearings. It was entirely predictable that they would seek to explain their repeated defeats by claiming fraud, or dissing their own candidates, or blaming the stupidity of the electorate. Their cries of pain and rage echo those of past elites who looked forward and saw the abyss. There is no more dramatic proof of the death of the Left than the passage of its central vision – global democratic revolution – into the hands of those who call themselves conservatives.

History has certainly not ended, but it has added a new layer to its rich compost heap.

Yesterday’s USA Today featured an op-ed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

A post-9/11 world has required the U.S. military to make many changes – changes that weren’t contemplated in the heady years of the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War. For example, today the department is buying more Predator aircraft and more precision munitions than anyone thought would be needed before 9/11.

Working with Congress, the department canceled at least two multibillion-dollar Cold War-era Army weapons systems: the Crusader artillery system and the Comanche helicopter. Undoubtedly, others will be considered. Any changes will most likely be opposed by special interests wedded to their systems, but nonetheless, we must continue to shift resources so we will be more adept at meeting today’s challenges.

Also, during successive decades of national security policymaking, the government decided that it made sense to place large percentages of our war-fighting capability into the reserve component of the armed forces. What may have made sense during the Cold War makes less sense today, when it is clear that we need more of those skills – such as military police, logisticians, civil affairs specialists – as part of the active force. The fact is, with some 2.4 million Americans serving in some uniformed capacity (active, Guard and Reserve), it is not that we have too little military personnel, but rather that the skill sets are not well apportioned among active, Guard and Reserve forces for today’s needs.

UPDATE: Power Line has two posts adressing the autopen controversy. And another post where the father of a Marine addresses this issue.

Chaplain Lewis has written a first person account of the aftermath of yesterday’s attack on a mess tent at FOB Marez.

After a few tense moments people began to move around again and the business of patching bodies and healing minds continued in earnest. As I stood talking with some other chaplain, an officer approached and not seeing us, yelled, “Is there a chaplain around here?” I turned and asked what I could do. He spoke to us and said that another patient had just been moved to the “expectant” list and would one of us come pray for him. I walked in and found him lying on the bed with a tube in his throat, and no signs of consciousness. There were two nurses tending to him in his final moments. One had a clipboard so I assumed she’d have the information I wanted. I turned to her and asked if she knew his name. Without hesitation the other nurse, with no papers, blurted out his first, middle, and last name. She had obviously taken this one personally. I’ll call him “Wayne”. I placed my hand on his head and lightly stroked his dark hair. Immediately my mind went to my Grandpa’s funeral when I touched his soft grey hair for the last time. And for the second time in as many hours I prayed wondering if it would do any good, but knowing that God is faithful and can do more than I even imagine. When I finished I looked up at the nurse who had known his name. She looked composed but struggling to stay so. I asked, “Are you OK?” and she broke down. I put my arm around her to comfort and encourage her. She said, “I was fine until you asked!” Then she explained that this was the third patient to die on her that day.

(From LGF)

Also, Jeremy Redmon, a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch attached to the 276th Engineer Battalion in Iraq, was an eyewitness to the carnage, and has written a story for his paper about the tragedy.

UPDATE: Other stories about the aftermath: FOX News, AP and Reuters.

UPDATE II: While no words can ease the sorrow caused by the loss of life yesterday, Power Line reminds us about the big picture. Also included in the post is a link to an article about the attack, which indicates that it may have been perpetrated by a suicide bomber, and not by a rocket or mortar.