You're right in that there wasn't a single "coherent" message from the left (and really, it's not the left, it's the center, there is no left in the US). The left isn't quite as good as the right at coordinating the message on a single set of talking points. The fact is, there were multiple reasons for not going to war:

• From a libertarian, strict constitutionalist perspective, the President doesn't have the authority to take the nation to war, that authority is reserved for Congress - who punted.
• There was no linkage (at that time) between Al Qaida and Iraq or the Saddam Hussein regime, so the invasion of Iraq was not justified under a global war on terrorism theory. Yet the Whitehouse inferred this link and the media, led by Fox News, picked it up and ran with it. Iraq was a part of a war on terrorism. Yet the Bush Whitehouse dedicated 10 times the military effort to Iraq than it did to Afghanistan which had direct links to Al Qaida, and is/was allied with Pakistan which is as much a base for the Taliban and Al Qaida as Afghanistan was/is and Pakistan has a history of sponsorship of terrorism (in the Kashmir) and proliferation of nuclear and missile technology.
• The official reasoning was about WMDs, but there was no hard evidence that Iraq had WMDs. In fact, the best evidence, that collected on the ground, in Iraq by UNMOVIC and IAEA inspectors was that there was no active WMD programs. This evidence was scorned and ignored while they prepared dossiers of forged documents, re-analyzed data that had been dismissed by the professionals at the CIA, stage props (Collin Powells little vial of white powder) and Winnebagos of Mass Destruction. However were there was strong evidence of WMDs (North Korea had/has a far more dangerous and developed nuclear weapons program and Iran is not far behind) there was little more than sabre rattling.
• If the grounds for invasion were humanitarian - concurrent at the time, there were far greater genocides taking place in Sudan, Somalia, Congo and Papau-New Guinea and far more dangerous failed states in Afghanistan and Somalia that they didn't dedicate anywhere near the same effort to.

There was a broad diversity of voices against the war. Just because you only had 1 reason, doesn't mean the left (center) was hijacked. The left didn't have the wrong message - it was simply too weak. We (on the center) were shouted down, labelled as traitors and terrorist lovers, suppressed and ridiculed.

To your first point - there was plenty of evidence that Saddam was a paper tiger. There was human intelligence from UNMOVIC and IAEA on the ground in Iraq - but these were dismissed as the the naive wishful thinking of Euro-Weenies and UN Bureaucrats, not on par with the critical analysis provided by Dick Cheney and his gang.

To the second point, sadly I doubt Twitter would have made any difference. There were voices of dissent in the US, and I was among them. But it wasn't just George Bush, it was America - the Bush Administration, Congress (which punted on its responsibility to declare or not to declare war), the press who got in line adn cheer led the effort, lured by jingoism and unfettered access to battlefield reporting and technology, and sadly, the American public who shouted down dissent and labelled those of us who opposed the war as "haters of America", or worse - terrorists. And even if Twitter or other social media had been around and had the ability to influence policy, the heavy hand of of the DOJ, aided by compliant federal courts and meek internet service providers would have crushed any broadly based social media opposition.

I've worked in China, Korea (in the 1990's), Malaysia and Saudi Arabia - and in my experience, nothing gets done unless someone is greasing the local officials. Smart companies do it through local agents to keep transactions at arms length, but in China for sure, everyone pays kickbacks.

No level of ignorance and stupidity from the Right in the US surprises me any more.

Oh yeah, and Keanu Reaves (Johnny Mnemonic) did it way before Tom Cruise (Minority Report).

While LCD monitor makers are striving to improve contrast ratios and reduce glare – blacker blacks, broader viewing angles and deeper, more vivid colours, futurists envision a world of high glare, transparent monitors where ambient lighting and artifacts on both sides of the glass wash out contrast and colours? Absurd.

I don't hate Windows 8, I just don't see any compelling reason to switch from Windows 7. In fact, the lack of compelling reasons to upgrade is probably Microsoft's biggest business challenge going forward.

I do consulting work and have to work with, and share files and working environments with clients. My previous laptop was a Dell XPS M1330 which I downgraded to Windows XP Professional. I hated Vista and continued to use Windows XP until last June when I replaced my laptop with a Lenovo W520 running Windows 7 Professional. I've played around with Windows 8 a bit - my son's computer has it, but I don't see anything that would cause me to update my laptop that is less than a year old. Likewise with MS Office. I used 2003 for the longest time, and quite frankly, would have been content to continue using it except for 2 reasons. 1) Clients started providing materials in MSO 2007 formats, and 2) I upgraded my old versions of Visio and MS Project to 2010, and it caused instability and incompatibility when embedding Visio and Project objects in Word 2003 and Powerpoint 2003 documents.

The switch from Windows XP to Windows 7 was relatively transparent. The switch from Office 2003 to Office 2010 wasn't too difficult. I don't find the ribbon quite so annoying anymore and it it nice to be able to Save As PDF rather than printing to a virtual PDF driver. I don't know what or when the next MS Office release is, but I can't see myself upgrading unless they change file formats again, and client documents force me to upgrade. Windows 8 is a whole new UI, and from what I have seen of it, I'm decidedly meh on the whole thing. I don't have (and have no plans to get) Windows Surface tablet - I have a Samsung tablet and an iPad2, so I don't see much benefit in a unified UI. Windows 9 is due in 2015 (if not delayed) - that is probably about the time frame I will need to replace my laptop, so I'll defer the decision until then. Hopefully by then, third parties will have a Windows 7 compatibility shiv for Windows 8 as I am usually loath to adopt versions of Windows prior to the first service pack.

My mother-in-law works for CRA (Canada Revenue Agency). Can you imagine working there for 35 years? My father-in-law recently retired from another equally humourless federal agency. Can you imagine dinner at the in-laws?

Well of course they;re going to throw poo at us!

My wife is a tenured university professor. Her stress level is through the roof.

Because encountering a terrorist is about as likely as winning the lottery, while encountering someone who shouldn't, but does have a gun is an almost daily occurrence?

Apple is harming itself.

I used to live in Pacifica California - approximately 200 yards from the San Andreas fault. When people from the gulf or Atlantic coasts asked me how I could live so close to a fault line my answer was always "at least there is no earthquake season".

It's not that Apple refuses to cross-license - they may, but the bigger problem is that Apple has no FRAND patents to offer in cross-licensing. They have design and utility patents, but Google is unlikely to consider these in cross-licensing because they probably feel they will eventually be invalidated.

When it comes to the core FRAND telecom patents, Apples has, as the saying goes, brought a knife to a gun fight. They can try to drag it out in court through appeals, but it's not like there are complex legal issues at stake here. They will lose. What ever license price they arrive at, it would be silly for a court to rule that the millions of previously sold, infringing devices, that should have been licensed, would not be subject to the license fee.

In the end, Motorola/Google has the bigger guns and has sufficient staying power if Apple chooses to drag it out. Google also has the option to seek an injunction against infringing devices.