We’ve gotten a number of queries regarding the corporeal status of Osama Bin Laden, given that Michael Ledeen, in Who’s An Iraqi?, reported that OBL croaked in December, yet he came out with an audiotape in January. Here’s the deal.

Suppose you were appointed global economic czar, and your task was to bring the world's per capita income up to the level of Ireland – which is almost that of the US. Would you: (A) Insist the world's rich nations transfer substantial wealth though massive foreign aid to the poor nations? (B) Insist all nations adopt policies that would make them as economically free as the top 10 freest economies today?

The world’s wealthiest exiles are the Iranians – folks who fled Iran after Jimmy Carter betrayed the Shah and let him be overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini. The Cubans who fled after Castro took over Cuba and amassed fortunes in Miami are financial pikers compared to the Iranians. Cumulatively they are worth billions. There are thousands of millionaires among them. And they are the stupidest millionaires on the planet. Because of their stupidity, they now face the extinction of their country.

Bit by bit we are getting to the inevitable showdown with Iran. This administration, like every other Western government, has hoped against hope that it would not come to this. President George W. Bush, for reasons good and bad, threw in with the Europeans' phony-negotiation scheme, even though he knew it would fail. Like the others, he hoped that revolution would erupt, and that decisive action on our part would not be necessary. Like the others, he preferred not to face the hard fact that revolutions rarely succeed without external support. Had Ronald Reagan been around, he would have told W that the democratic revolution that ended the Cold War only finally succeeded when the United States supported it.

In an audiotape broadcast Thursday on al Jazeera, Osama bin Laden said al Qaeda is preparing to strike the United States again. Last month Italian authorities arrested three Algerians with al Qaeda connections. They were plotting attacks on ships, railway stations and stadiums in the United States, said Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu. Some Democrats think President Bush should be impeached for trying to keep them from succeeding. Like Al Gore.

Here’s a question: Would you go shopping for shoes at a grocery store? Why not? Oh, yes, grocery stores don’t sell shoes. You only go to a particular store because it’s selling what you want to buy. You don’t go to a store that doesn’t sell what you want to buy. Right, boys and girls? This Kindergarten lesson came to mind when I saw the Democrats over at the Library of Congress yesterday (January 18) ostentatiously signing what they called their “Declaration of Honest Leadership and Open Government.”

I'm far more restrained than many experts who see security problems getting worse, not better, even though new, better and more powerful security tools are being developed all the time. But, like modern government, Windows is not going anywhere. To expect masses of computer users to pick up and move en masse to other operating systems like Linux is unrealistic; Microsoft's domination of operating systems and Windows software is too entrenched, and most people have enough to do without reorienting their computing skills, too. In any case, competing operating systems have their own security problems. The greater their market share gets, the more hackers will concentrate on them. And since Linux is based on open source code, it is that much easier to find and exploit flaws. Does that mean that Windows users will forever be subjected to endless barrages of viruses, "exploits" and Registry "holes"? The Microsoft folks say no, but in the meantime there does seem no end to their issuing “patches” to fix their bugs. There has to be a better way – and now there is. If Obi-Wan Kenobe were a computer programmer, he would say, “May the Core Force be with you.”

The good news is we're unlikely to be as obsessed with the war in Iraq in 2006 as we were in 2005. The bad news is we may soon have much more to worry about. Mahmoud Amadinejad is the president of Iran, picked by the aging mullahs of the Guardian Council who hold the real power in the land. Since his election last August, Mr. Amadinejad has been replacing elderly clerics in senior government positions with colleagues from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Iranian version of the Nazi SS, which he once commanded. Mr. Amadinejad is a thug, a religious lunatic, and may soon be armed with nukes.