Never had a general so effectively willed away the facts.

Increasingly the United States found itself isolated. Having for two decades enjoyed its status as champion of the free world, it was increasingly the target of bitter criticism abroad and at home, where a growing number of prominent intellectuals and church leaders denounced the bombing campaign as barbaric. The military might disdain the fickle nature of public sympathy, but a democracy cannot sustain a war effort without it, and moral revulsion was growing.

Today there is big money for those who can stealthily invade computer networks, or construct a secure botnet, and no modern military arsenal is complete without state-of-the-art malware.

He was so out of step with the youthful antiwar fervor of the period that he enlisted in the army at the height of the Vietnam War, only to be thrown out for lying about his age, education, and criminal past.

Against the certainties of the American command, the truth never stood a chance.

Regular users know nothing about program languages or varying exchange protocols. They just want the thing to run. So Microsoft invented a way to bundle executable programs and data, the DLL, that allows them to be smoothly exchanged by computers on different networks.

If there was one ideological rationale that had broad appeal, it was nationalism, which for many boiled down to a fervent desire to be left alone.

Criminals saw the man, not the badge, and they liked him, sometimes enough to tell him surprising and damaging things.

How much sense would it make, after all, for someone involved with a kidnapping to draw attention to himself by claiming to be a witness and telling an elaborate lie?

I pride myself on not making people’s experience shittier.