That about sums it up:

"It would have required courage to hang out with the Mahdi Army, if there were any likelihood that a member of the Iraqi "insurgency" would regard a representative of the New York Times as an enemy."

Deep, deep, deep lunacy. Um, no. I take that back. That doesn't even begin to describe it. Or the depth of the danger we face from his Hojjatieh loons:

"“Their methods resemble Hitler’s. When Hitler wanted to launch an attack, he came up with a pretext,” Ahmadinejad said during a speech in Tehran. “Zionists say they are Hitler’s victims, but they have the same nature as Hitler,” he said."

"This difference makes the nature of the protracted struggles faced by the West against these two fundamental challenges very different. In many ways, there was a basic premise inherent in the policy of containment taken against the communist world: Wait long enough and the truth of the superiority of liberal societies will become apparent to the world. But a policy of containment against Islamic imperialism cannot hope for such eventual success. Since Islam does not make any ambitious proposal to improve the lot of its followers in the real world, but only in an imaginary afterlife, no amount of waiting can undermine its claim to truth."

The Big Pharoah's Dad -- an ex Egyptian General -- weighs in:

"This idiot Nasrallah. He is so funny. He keeps on issuing threats, he has no idea what he is talking about. What Israel is doing to him now is just gentle padding on the shoulders. Abou Shakha dah didn't see what we saw. Israel fought on 3 fronts in 1967 and it was hell. I was there, I saw it all. He has no tanks, no boats, he has nothing except a few toys he got from Iran and it seems abu shakha dah don't know that Israel confronted 3 of the most powerful armies in the region at the same time. If Israel wanted to brutally crush him it can do so in 1 hour.

[ Big Pharaoh then clarifies: -ed. ] *Abu Shakha dah literally means "this guy with the piss". We use this slang term to refer to a grown up whose capabilities is of a baby who wets himself."

"We were waiting and waiting and waiting and everyone knows that Israel pulled out entirely from Gaza precisely in order to try and establish a new basis of cooperation and understanding with the Palestinians, when there can be no claim for any territory by the Palestinians in the south part of the country. And the response was terror and terror and terror and terror again. So at some point Israel had no choice but to take some measures in order to stop this threat."

"The experience of the past three years has shown that the more the United States has tried the "multilateral" track on Iran and North Korea, the more defiant they have both become.

It is, perhaps, time for America and its "willing" allies - such as Britain, Japan, South Korea and Australia - to understand that what is at issue in the case of North Korea and Iran is a classical case of great-power rivalry motivated by national interests. In such rivalries, there are always two camps with conflicting agendas. The hope that the United States can organize a third camp that would include some "multipolarist" rivals is the offspring of an illusion."

"Forty-eight hours after bombs ripped through Mumbai, the needle pointed to Pakistan. Intelligence agencies on Thursday confirmed that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was the “mastermind” of the blasts that killed about 200 people."

Spengler rocks on American Leftist shibboleths and the precipice they stand on:

"A quarter of the language groups in New Guinea, home to 1,200 of the world's 6,000 languages, were exterminated by warfare during every preceding century, according to one estimate Wade cites. In primitive warfare "casualty rates were enormous, not the least because they did not take prisoners. That policy was compatible with their usual strategic goal: to exterminate the opponent's society. Captured warriors were killed on the spot, except in the case of the Iroquois, who took captives home to torture them before death, and certain tribes in Colombia, who liked to fatten prisoners before eating them."

However badly civilized peoples may have behaved, the 100 million or so killed by communism and the 50 million or so killed by National Socialism seem modest compared with the 2 billion or so who would have died if the casualty rates of primitive peoples had applied to the West. The verdict is not yet in, to be sure. One is reminded of the exchange between Wednesday Addams (played by the young Christina Ricci in the 1993 film Addams Family Values) and a girl at summer camp, who asks, "Why are you dressed like someone died?" to which Wednesday replies, "Wait!"

Guiding the warlike inclinations of primitive peoples is genetic kinship, and the micro-cultures (such as dialect) that attend it. Christianity called out individuals from the nations, and gave them a new birth through baptism in a new people, whose earthly pilgrimage led to the Kingdom of God. Christians began with contempt for the flesh of their own origins; post-Christians envy the "authenticity" of the peoples who never were called out from the nations, for they have left the pilgrimage in mid-passage and do not know where they are or where they should go.

It is difficult to be a Christian, for the faith that points to the Kingdom of God conflicts with the Gentile flesh whence Christians come; but it is oppressive, indeed intolerable to be an ex-Christian, for it is all the harder to trace one's way back. Europeans have less difficulty, for the Italians never quite gave up their pagan gods whom the Church admitted as saints, and the Germans never quite gave up their heathen religion, which lived on as a substratum of myth and magic beneath the veneer of Christianity.

If the United States of America is the Christian nation par excellence - as I have argued on numerous occasions - then the predicament of an American ex-Christian is especially miserable. Americans do not have close at hand the Saints Days of Italian villages incorporating heathen practice predating Rome, or the Elf-ridden forest of the German north celebrated in Romantic poetry. They have suburban housing developments and strip malls, urban forests of steel and glass, Hollywood and Graceland, but nothing "authentic"."

"The concept of a well-educated, well-spoken infantry lieutenant who would rather fight for his country than be a Washington lawyer is apparently too much for some liberals to bear. Two quick observations about this phenomenon.

First, the long-diagnosed Bush Derangement Syndrome has metastasized in some patients into a generalized Derangement Syndrome. Second, the same people who deny the reality of Lt. Tom Cotton will swallow hook, line and sinker every statement attributed by the New York Times or Washington Post to an unknown, unnamed, anonymous leaker with God knows what qualifications or axe to grind, who--assuming he exists--is violating his oath and, in some instances, committing a crime by leaking. An interesting contrast."

Looks like CQ's answer to the NYeT going to be an exercise in table turning on WMD:

"One key point (besides the memo) that undermines the argument for a civil hydrogen production facility is the ease in which the Iraqis could already produce and store hydrogen. Oil refining creates hydrogen in fairly large quantities as a normal byproduct. If the Iraqis wanted hydrogen for weather balloons, they could have simply pumped it into tanks and used normal trucks to transport it where needed. Now we have another argument against the hydrogen production explanation.

A CQ reader with a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Minnesota and with over sixteen years of experience in weapons and materiel laboratory work in the military has written a paper on why the hydrogen lab explanation cannot possibly explain the existence and the engineering of these mobile laboratories. Preferring anonymity for professional reasons, "ChemicalConsultant" has allowed me access to a condensed version of an analysis that he has sent to Joby Warrick at the Washington Post, Reps. Curt Weldon and Jane Harman, and former CIA director John Deutsch, now at MIT -- none of whom have responded to ChemicalConsultant or addressed these concerns."

"The only other explanation was that the missiles really did hit WMD facilities and that our intelligence had selected good targets for the limited missile strikes. The emphasis on the urgency of checking the presidential sites seems to confirm this. Saddam had attempted to exclude a number of facilities on the premise that they were his personal palaces and not subject to UNSCOM inspections. That, in fact, was what caused Saddam to bar inspectors in late 1998, and what prompted the missile attacks.

Someone very high up worried about nuclear and at least chemical contamination at these presidential sites. That anxiety seems to have come from the knowledge of what those sites actually held."

"In my view, this war began because Israel's enemies, and especially Iran, perceive Israel as much weaker than before. They thus saw an opportunity to demonstrate the changing balance of power in the region. Dealing a temporary defeat to Hezbollah may be enough to show that Israel is still strong, but it will not be enough to convince Israel's enemies, and especially Iran, that the tide is turning in their favor and that time is on their side."

"The Israeli warship damaged yesterday in a Hizballah attack was not hit by a UAV, as first reported; it was an Iranian-made missile. [ Ho-hum. And of course there couldn't be any Iranian troops helping Hizballah run them... -ed. ] "

"When the Israelis withdrew, I wrote that they would have no choice but to return to both territories, and clean them out. We are now at that stage."

"The international community cannot expect Iran to take its brinkmanship seriously when, at the same moment it threatens sanctions, it refuses to clearly take Israel's side against Iran's blatant act of proxy aggression. We cannot even say we have reached the end of the beginning before free nations show something of the solidarity and clarity of purpose that the jihadis - in Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and al-Qaida - show against us."

"The dictators in the region have always been happy to fight the Israelis to the last Palestinian. Now it looks like they're happy to fight the Israelis to the last Lebanese, too. And why not? Lebanon is a relatively liberal and almost half Christian sort-of democracy. Can't have any of that in the region if you're a totalitarian mullah. It suits Tehran just fine if the Jews slug it out with such people."

"The experience of the past three years has shown that the more the United States has tried the "multilateral" track on Iran and North Korea, the more defiant they have both become.

It is, perhaps, time for America and its "willing" allies - such as Britain, Japan, South Korea and Australia - to understand that what is at issue in the case of North Korea and Iran is a classical case of great-power rivalry motivated by national interests. In such rivalries, there are always two camps with conflicting agendas. The hope that the United States can organize a third camp that would include some "multipolarist" rivals is the offspring of an illusion."

The clock hands approach midnight:

"An attack at this distance, by night on a warship indicates a very high level of targeting skill. A capability beyond Hezbollah's own limited resources. This suggests that Iranian technical assistance to its client has been extensive and thorough."

"This should prove that these documents are authentic. No one could make this up. This comes from document ISGP-2003-00014647, page 48 and 49."

"Iran has revealed its hand, challenging the US and its allies and openly demonstrating its desire to dominate the Middle East through force and terror. While we have been trying to delay the war with Iran, it has brought the war to us, in a manner so obvious that even the mainstream media cannot evade it.

In doing so, they have made their threat to America and its interests more obvious and more urgent--providing a stronger case for war than their nuclear program could provide. There can be no question here about whether Iran really has aggressive designs in the Middle East, whether it really seeks the weapons to attack the US and its allies, and how long it might take for such a threat to materialize. The threat is here and Iran's newest war on the West has already begun."

In case you were wondering how witless Time is, Michelle has a video you won't soon forget:

"Reality-checking Time magazine"

"Why? Because occupation was a mere excuse to persuade gullible and historically ignorant Westerners to support the Arab cause against Israel. The issue is, and has always been, Israel's existence. That is what is at stake.

It was Yasser Arafat's PLO that persuaded the world that the issue was occupation. Yet through all those years of pretense, Arafat's own group celebrated its annual Fatah Day on the anniversary of its first attack on Israel, the bombing of Israel's National Water Carrier -- on Jan. 1, 1965.

Note: 1965. Two years before the 1967 war. Two years before Gaza and the West Bank fell into Israeli hands. Two years before there were any "occupied territories.''"

They are the modern Aztecs:

"The death-worshipping Palestinians--perhaps the most sick and evil culture since the Ancient Aztec--systematically poison the souls of their children with hatred of the light before sending them off to murder innocents on behalf of their sinister god. They use their children as “human” shields, for that is what they are: the little humans that the monsters hide behind, for some part of their twisted mind realizes that we value their children more than they do. And if one of them is accidentally killed, the monsters know how to play on our guilt. Although they cannot empathize with children, they intuit that we have a soft spot for them, and know that they can manipulate our sensibilities with the cooperation of the dupes of the Western media."

"to the person who said that palestinian and lebanese are one people well ur so damn wrong we are not like the palestinien and we do not want to fight their war, we only want out country we want peace and we want to get over with hizbulla, hopefully soon, so don’t link the lebanese to any of the arab world peope caus they are a bunch of f-cked up people"

"The complex systems associated with these phenomena – wars included – exhibit what is called ‘self-organized criticality.’ They organize themselves into such a state that, even when disturbed only slightly, they can tip suddenly from stability to instability creating a major catastrophic event. The movement of a single grain of sand can set off an avalanche. A spark can ignite a major forest fire. An apparently insignificant action can trigger a global conflict. Such a system is said to exist in a critical state between order and chaos, poised at the ‘edge of chaos.’"

"The president and I attended Yale at roughly the same time (he graduated in 1968; I in 1969).

I didn't know him, but a friend of mine played poker with him and concluded, "Never play poker with Bush.""

Did you forget that Pakistan is the unnamed partner in the axis of evil? I thought you did:

"Forty-eight hours after bombs ripped through Mumbai, the needle pointed to Pakistan. Intelligence agencies on Thursday confirmed that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was the “mastermind” of the blasts that killed about 200 people."

"Oh, and a PS to Iran. If you want to make the dumbest move every recorded in the annals of diplomacy, let Hezbollah move those two Israeli prisoners to Iran. Please. Give Israel an excuse to trade those two soldiers for your nascent nuclear weapons program."

No kidding:

"So here is my observation/theory — Iran has orchestrated much (if not all) of the current unrest and violence in order to: (i) distract attention from its nuclear weapons program, (ii) tie down Israel militarily in order to reduce the chances that Israel could unilaterally (or in combination with the U.S.) launch a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, (iii) scare the American public (and politicians) into rejecting any unilateral military option against Iran for fear of further inflaming the Mideast (e.g., "Geez, we've already got huge issues in North Korea, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, we can't possibly afford any further foreign entanglements" or "We better not do anything to Iran, we might further inflame the Mideast, threaten our oil supply and the U.S. economy" (Lord knows we don't want to pay $%/gallon for our SUV's)), and (iv) create world furor against Israel (and indirectly the U.S.), to further raise the stakes and international opposition to any unilateral military strikes."

Hell has frozen over:

"But Saudi Arabia broke ranks with the Muslim world, indirectly blaming the crisis on the “irresponsible actions” of Hezbollah."

"We were waiting and waiting and waiting and everyone knows that Israel pulled out entirely from Gaza precisely in order to try and establish a new basis of cooperation and understanding with the Palestinians, when there can be no claim for any territory by the Palestinians in the south part of the country. And the response was terror and terror and terror and terror again. So at some point Israel had no choice but to take some measures in order to stop this threat."

"The whole point of the Geneva Conventions is to encourage legitimate soldiering, even under the pressures of war. It was written intentionally to exclude terrorists and other “informal” fighters, who do not wear uniforms or other clear markings, who arm themselves in exceptionally vicious ways, who target non-combatants as a matter of course, and whose behaviour is in every other way unanswerable to civilized norms."

"Which leads politicians to the third stage of surprise and dismay: "I just made American public policy on stem cell research, telling Harvard and Yale doctors what to do. Am I not Plato? Would you not like to kiss my hand?"

This is the ego generated by people of whom impossible demands are made."

"That isn't an argument that we should not abide by the GC, of course; we signed the document, and we should honor our commitment. However, let's quit pretending that this will gain us anything in the way our enemies treat our men and women, once captured. Perhaps someone can explain that supposed benefit to the families of Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker.

If we want to use courts-martial instead of tribunals, fine; that's a decision that Congress and the White House have to make. Let's not pretend that this will make a bit of difference to any American soldier captured by our enemies."

"Notice, please, that he says Iran “sponsored the meetings of Baathist and radical Islamist militants...” He is talking Sunnis here, the same Sunnis who, according to CIA deep thinkers and scads of academic experts, cannot possibly work closely with Shiites like, ahem, the mullahs of Tehran. Iraq the Model isn’t burdened by this wisdom, and so he just reports what he sees on the ground in his own country."

"That gun ban is working out quite well isn't it?"

What do us Bobs know anyway?:

"Tacitus, the renowned Roman historian who lived in the first century A.D., viewed the Hebrews as contemptible because “they considered it a crime among them to kill any child.” Nothing has changed. To paraphrase Golda Meir, the Arabs will only begin to make psychohistorical progress when they love their own children as much as they hate Jewish children. The two attitudes are simply two sides of the same coin: Palestinians and other Arabs engage in systematic abuse of their own children, who then grow up to externalize their implacable hatred onto Israelis."

"The whole point of the Geneva Conventions is to encourage legitimate soldiering, even under the pressures of war. It was written intentionally to exclude terrorists and other “informal” fighters, who do not wear uniforms or other clear markings, who arm themselves in exceptionally vicious ways, who target non-combatants as a matter of course, and whose behaviour is in every other way unanswerable to civilized norms."

"shashoujian"

Apocalypse continuous:

"What kind of people would blow up a little girl's school or attack a train full of working Indians? And what kind of people would admire them?"

My Post For The 4th: On Spotting Idiots Vs Imprisoning Benedict Lichtblau

"Burning the flag is a stupid and ugly act, but there is something lovely and enlightened about a regime that tolerates it in the name of freedom. And of course it has the added benefit of making it easier to spot the idiots."

You might ask why flag burning is tolerable where the NYeT needs to go to prison for treason? Because flag burners aren't actually endangering the lives of my children.

UPDATE: Here's what our flag (and the neighbor's) looked like after we got home from the baseball game:

"The hudna goes back to Mohammed, who used the device to gather his strength while weakening his enemy. Haniyeh knows full well what a hudna means, even if he thinks his audience does not. It's the final prevarication in a column full of lies and half-truths, hyperbole and hypocrisy. We leave Haniyeh's column more convinced than ever that Hamas has no intention of negotiating for Palestinian statehood along the framework of previous agreements, but intends to wage terrorism against Israel until it concedes."

Today's health update:

"The omega-3 fatty acids found in fish such as salmon are already known to help the heart and brain stay healthy. The new studies, appearing Monday in the Archives of Ophthalmology, add to evidence that fish eaters also protect the eyes."

"The caption in the print edition reads: "Photographer Kate Brooks went from Iran to Oman to capture the diverse fashions of Muslim women."

"The diverse fashions." [ Umm. The pics would be all the variants of head to toe burkas that is. -ed. ]

Brooks' multimedia photo essay at Time.com plays like an apologia for sharia law."

Ho-hum. What's a little Hojjatieh between friends?

"Ahmadinejad sees himself as Allah’s instrument to pave the way for Imam Mahdi, and constantly uses public appearances to urge his countrymen to prepare to back him in this task.

Rumor is, Imam Mahdi could be returning this August (or shortly thereafter), just around the time some military experts believe Iran will be ready to construct its first nuclear weapon. Go figure.

Ahmadinejad has made clear his confidence that he and other true believers can affect this apocalyptic timetable, and will use all means at his disposal to do so.

Also of note is that August 22 of this year corresponds with the Islamic date of Rajab 28, the day Saladin conquered and entered Jerusalem.

Taken in conjunction with Ahmadinejad’s stated desire to see Israel destroyed, it hardly seems a coincidence."

Chinese nutjob sighting #45927:

"Japan was badly rattled by North Korea's missile tests last week, and several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Tokyo to launch a pre-emptive strike against Northern missile sites.

"If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack ... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense. We need to deepen discussion," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said."

So let me make sure I'm not missing anything here. The man in line to be the next Japanese PM is starting to make W seem like Cindy Sheehan. Check. The only country in the world hit by nukes in war could now be considered to be even within a light parsec of considering their acquisition. Check. Oh, and that supposedly useless Star Wars stuff? The Japanese are starting to buy raft loads of it and have signed a deal to go into production soon and perfect it themselves if necessary. Check. The Chinese are now headed recklessly for a military/ economic contest with the U.S., Japan and probably India too. Check.

They're bloodthirsty, suicidal loons. Check.

Yet more proof that the only things between us and a 9/11 replay are the reinforced cockpit doors and planes full of passengers that know better now than to sit like sheep:

"Whenever anyone answers falsely at a security checkpoint, it should raise a red flag in a security officer's mind. If they see a significant modification of consumer electronics that makes no sense for its operation, that should raise another red flag. In this case, the Arabic surname and the Qu'ran are secondary issues; anyone who presents the first two issues should be held until they can get clearance through the FBI as to whether the passenger poses a threat. Arguing that a slow computer response alleviates them from this responsibility just means that the people involved do not have the appropriate understanding of their mission."

Really, we should just stop screening passengers. It's entirely risible.

NYeT to all, and to all a good Gramscian Neo-Syndicalist NYeT:

"North Korea will not return to the six-party talks unless we release their funds at the Macau bank -- funds that they printed themselves in their own counterfeiting ring -- and agree to allow them to continue the operation. The Times apparently endorses Kim's counterfeiting operation, since they blame George Bush for stopping the money laundering and the profit that Kim received from his efforts. That's why they deliberately skip over informing their readers for the second time of the entire context of the stalemate.

The Times has descended into a fundamentally dishonest media publication. They continually misinform their readers and show no compunction about doing so on multiple occasions just to undermine a President they don't like. This editorial and the one that preceded it are utterly indefensible."

Pants down part 45842:

"Yesterday I wrote about the obvious quid pro quo between Bill Clinton's presidential pardon of Edgar and Vonna Jo Gregory and the loans given to Hillary Clinton's brother, Anthony Rodham, starting two months later. Clinton pardoned the Gregorys in March 2000 for bank fraud convictions going back to 1982. Without that pardon, United Shows (owned by the Gregorys) could not procure state contracts for handling carnivals. In May 2000, United Shows started issuing a series of loans to Rodham that eventually totalled $107,000, loans for which they never demanded payment and which Rodham never paid on his own. It was not until United Shows went into receivership that the loans came to light, and the receiver filed claims against Rodham for repayment of the $107,000, plus another $46,000 in interest."

"The floor debate over the McConnell proposal was revealing. Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois inexplicably claimed the proposal was a solution without a problem because there was no voter fraud in the country. Coming from a man who represents Chicago, his statement left some colleagues in slack-jawed amazement. Almost as unbelievable were claims by Sen. Ted Kennedy that a photo ID requirement would bring back the equivalent of a poll tax on voters. "How can it be a poll tax, if anyone can get the ID for free?" shot back Mr. McConnell."

"Roughly speaking, Palestinian politics is dominated by terrorists — as represented by Hamas — and corrupt terrorist-enabling incompetents — as represented by Fatah, the late Yasser Arafat’s organization. Pity the Palestinians if Fatah is their best hope for rational government. Former Arafat negotiator and elected Fatah representative Saeb Erekat admits that Fatah needs to reform. “We’re not doing it,” he says, “and have no excuse for not doing it — I don’t feel like lying today.”"

"The whole point of the Geneva Conventions was to confine conflicts to, if not regular state signatories, then to combatant groups who recognized—and upheld—its legitimacy. The purpose was not only to protect armed service members from abuse, but, even more importantly, to place civilians beyond the scope of legitimate conflict. In return for this protection, civilian militias were placed on notice that, in order to receive the protections of the Conventions, they would have to fully apply them, which meant that they would, in essence, have to organize themselves as legitimate armed forces—making a clear distinction between themselves and civilians—in order to qualify for the protection of the Conventions. At the same time, this also put civilians on notice that, if they wished to keep their protections under the conventions intact, a clear bifurcation had to be made between militia forces and the regular civilian population."

"Big MSM has really lost its way, concluding that anything "secret" is in fact wrongfully hidden from public view, and that its function is to act as a conveyer belt to the front page for whatever a party or person doesn't want revealed."

"The West needs to shut down the negotiating process and allow Israel to defend itself. No one in the Palestinian political structure has any interest in peaceful co-existence with Israel. If they did suddenly endorse it, the Palestinians would realize how badly they have been led for decades and would probably rise up and kill them, and still would take another generation to figure out that their misery comes from their own bad decisions. Our interference in that process only delays the eventual epiphany."

Demosophist has the concise best case coverage of the NYeT EneMedia in this little piece:

"So this isn't about carrying a grudge against the NYT, but about the fact that they're apparently so clueless that they don't even know they've made a mistake. And since the expertise required for them to make informed judgments about which disclosures are harmful has gone the way of the Monty Python Parrot, they ought to be enjoined from making such decisions until they wise up. Watching Keller take wild swings at soft underhand lobs by Charlie Rose the other night, nearly all of which he whiffed, I realized that the primary problem wasn't that this fellow was an idiot, but that he has no incentive to get wise. And until some are devised, we'd better just assume that Katy's knocked the doggone door off its hinges again."

Sadly, the best case for the NYeT is quite analogous to the central dilemma of the "Tinfoil Apocalyse": Putting too much technology in the hands of the witless leads almost inevitably to disaster. Put a red button in front of your average primitive tribesman and you need to run away fast because there's about to be a very large explosion. The prime directive will have been violated quite spectacularly. We're just seeing the analogous phenomenon with printing presses.

But I'll still call them the EneMedia until I have absolute proof that they aren't really Joseph Goebbels types disguising themselves as the village idiot. Even though they may be nothing more than useful idiots, it's never a good idea to underestimate your enemy. And this kind of outcome is quite a stupendous confirmation of Antonio Gramsci's legacy if true...

And ultimately, this all revolves around the central dilemma of the war on terror Islamic nihilism. Even if you understand we do have real enemies, it's quite hard not to have sufficient hubris to avoid taking them seriously. After all, they seem just so, well, witlessly thuggish. And how could we possibly lose to something as feeble as that?

If they're not on the other side, the NYeT clearly believes this.

But lots of thoughtful citizens who pretty much get it have trouble clearing this hurdle.