Nearly a dozen top technology luminaries are lending their star power to a new think-tank that will look for ways to elevate the status of chief security officers in the private sector, a move that they say will go a long way toward improving Internet security.

The Global Council of Chief Security Officers was formed by former White House cybersecurity adviser Howard Schmidt, who said it helps fulfill a promise he made after leaving the Bush administration earlier this year to make Internet security a top issue in the business community.

In his admirable ... speech last week, President Bush ... announced a new policy of encouraging democracy rather than dictatorship in the Muslim world.

What Mr. Bush neglected to mention was that many Muslims, if freed to make their own democratic choices, will choose Islam over secularism. A case in point is the newly released draft of the Afghan constitution, which enshrines Islamic values even as it guarantees basic liberties.

A New National Security Strategy in an Age of Terrorists, Tyrants, and Weapons of Mass Destruction

Three Options Presented as Presidential Speeches

George Soros argues that the heedless assertion of American power in the world resembles a financial bubble -- and the moment of truth may be here.

... A recent CFR publication sketches out three alternative national-security strategies ... [including one that] would have the US lead a cooperative effort to improve the world by engaging in preventive actions of a constructive character. It is not advocated by any group of significance, although President Bush pays lip service to it. That is the policy I stand for.

George Soros, one of the world's richest men, has given away nearly $5 billion to promote democracy in the former Soviet bloc, Africa and Asia. Now he has a new project: defeating President Bush.

During his first 30 months in office, the man from Midland had started a foreign policy revolution. He had discarded many of the constraints that had bound the United States to its allies and redefined key principles that had governed American engagement in the world for more than half a century.

Like most revolutions, Bush's had numerous critics. Yet he now traveled through Europe and the Middle East not as a penitent making amends but as a leader commanding respect. America unbound was remaking the course of international politics. Bush was the rare revolutionary who had succeeded.

After half a century mainly on the periphery, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan have become far more important for US national security interests. South Asia may be halfway around the globe from the United States, but in the age of the Internet and globalization, what happens there can affect all Americans.

The challenge to US policy over the medium term (through 2010) is to design and implement a stable and sustained approach that will solidify bilateral ties with these key countries and give the United States an opportunity to influence major regional developments.

On 21 September 2002, The Memory Hole posted an extract from an essay by George Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft, in which they explain why they didn't have the military push into Iraq and topple Saddam during Gulf War 1. Although there are differences between the Iraq situations in 1991 and 2002-3, Bush's key points apply to both.