...it's somebody hackin' yer damn website.

(Via Juan Cole.)

Although it seems intriguing that somebody claiming to be named "Billy" is quite so fluent in written Arabic, don'tcha think? Somehow I am skeptical of the authenticity of this name.

Muqtada al Sadr can only put a hundred thousand or more armed, irate Shiite folks into the streets on about 20 minutes notice, so it's real smart to go pissing him off with hijinks on his website. Read more…

Read these two stories and tell me that (1) we're not at war with, or at least under attack by, an actual foreign power with the actual ability to do us harm and (2) we're losing. Oh yeah, and neither side really wants us peasants to know what's going on:

WaPo:

Hackers operating through Chinese Internet servers have launched a debilitating attack on the computer system of a sensitive Commerce Department bureau, forcing it to replace hundreds of workstations and block employees from regular use of the Internet for more than a month, Commerce officials said yesterday.

Reuters story in Scientific American:

(Reuters) - China has beamed a ground-based laser at U.S. spy satellites over its territory, a U.S. agency said, in an action that exposed the potential vulnerability of space systems that provide crucial data to American troops and consumers around the world.