That's what I thought - which is why your original statement - "FreeRepublic is already doing it's part to improve security by running on a Linux server. " - adds nothing to the thread but might conversely give users a false sense of security.
If Free Republic was hosted on Windows servers, it would be a magnet for viruses and hackers. Thanks to Linux hosting, the main threat here seems to be operatives like MD4Bush.
The current problem must be resolved at the operating system level, and Microsoft is doing a lousy job getting it fixed.
I found some distributions of the text-only Lynx web browser for Win32. If I used Windows, I'd be testing that browser right now. It can't display images at all, so it ignores links to images.