"One "oddity" after another. I don't think I've ever seen or heard of a situation where the concerns of a sovereign state were this inscrutable. Not even the Soviet Union measures up to this level of mystery, and certainly not the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But I have yet to see anything that runs directly counter to Simon's thesis: that this is a magnificent deception. That is, other than the obvious problem that a dramaturgical display this extensive and deceptive is totally unprecedented, and demands a level of discipline and competence that's difficult to even imagine. It seems unlikely, but what else explains all of these clues?

On the other hand the Israelis might know that Iran has some WMD capability that no one else has guessed, and be keeping wraps on such information to quell panic, or because there was a massive intelligence failure involved. What else? [ My, we live in interesting times. Or are watching unprecedented disaster unfold. Pray hard. Somehow, I'm guessing we will find the answer soon. August 22nd or no... -ed. ] "

"Furthermore, because the resolution strengthens the UN as the arbiter of peace and security in the region, the diplomatic price the US will be forced to pay if it decides to go outside the UN to contend with the Iranian threat has been vastly increased."

"Hmm. What other realist prescriptions can we implement? Coddle Castro? Abandon Taiwan?"

Plan Jael

Ledeen with an August 22nd update:

"The more I look at it, the more I am convinced that the plot in London is indeed connected to the much-discussed August 22nd Iranian "response" to our latest final proposal on their nuclear program. Metaphorically, it fits: lightning bolts in the skies, an epochal, world-changing event, as befits the terrorists' celebration of Mohammed's ride to heaven.

And notice that the Iranians have now backed off that date, blaming, of course, us. [ I'm praying that they have had unforseen technical problems with the centrifuges... -ed. ]

I think that other events were and are planned around the same date, in several different countries. Hardly anyone has noticed that the Germans found some bombs on their trains a few weeks ago. And I expect that other allies will either find, or be subjected to, terrorist acts.

Why? Because the Iranians believe their moment has come, and they are reinforced in believing that by the abject failure of their regime. This combination of the realization of their failure in Iran and their belief that they can truly win their 27-year old war against us, is a very potent psychological force, and I think they are going to go all out to win, fast.

They think they have won, or are winning, in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Why has nobody noticed the advance of the fanatics in Somalia, by the way? Look at a map. Find Somalia. You see its strategic importance. Then ask yourself what we will do when our ships are attacked by the same Iranian missiles that hit the Israeli gunship off the coast of Lebanon...

And then ask yourself why in the world a president who correctly insists that we are at war with Islamic Fascism cannot manage to support freedom in Iran and Syria?

If you've got an answer, I'd love to hear it. It beats the bejeezus out of me. [ And the answer to Churchill's favorite Bible verse is: "Plan Jael". "Plan Jael" was "the 'overall deception policy' of the high commands of America, Britain and Russia to mislead Hitler about Allied strategy and tactics ..., and about military operations that would include the gigantic assault on the Atlantikwall at Normandy." It was "so secret that that its contents would not become public until December 1972, twenty-nine years later." And Ledeen -- and the rest of us who haven't Ostriched -- is praying that W's admiration and study of Churchill has not come to nought. -ed. ]

"

Plan Jael was later renamed "Bodyguard" based on Churchill's now-famous quote: "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies."

"And don't forget later in the war when we rashly invaded France on the beaches of Normandy. Why, we weren't even at war with France! The New York Times was the first to sound the call for peace and a cease-fire so that we could negotiate with the National Socialists and bring an honorable end to the war. [ OK. This is a *huge* hint about Churchill's favorite Bible passage. Think people, think! -ed. ] "

Lowry has a scoop confirming Israeli failure:

"Was just talking to a friend who was noting that there is intense anger toward Israel within the administration for botching the war. He thinks the attitude was, "What's the point of giving them more time when they do nothing with it?" He thinks it's the worst defeat for Israel since 1948. He also guesses that the reason that the French flipped against the first resolution wasn't so much the Lebanese reaction as the realization of how poorly Israel was faring militarily."

"Suspected terrorists were planning to unleash a wave of "apocalyptic" [ Hmm. That word keeps cropping up, doesn't it? -ed. ] attacks on land and air, using an arsenal of bombs and weaponry, including firearms, investigators have discovered.

Police and intelligence sources have indicated that the alleged plot which was thwarted last week was targeted at the UK, as well as at airliners heading for the US, and could have caused devastating loss of life and destruction on the British mainland. One Whitehall source said "many dozens" of plots were under investigation, involving "hundreds" of suspects. [ More evidence for this being the "resounding slap" I think. Still seems weak for a "devastating fist-blow" though. I think that's still coming. I'm praying we can stop it also -- although this gives me less confidence that we've actually stopped the "slap"... -ed. ] "

"The larger evasion is this: the left senses that a regional war is coming, that Iran is hell-bent on starting it, and that there is no way to avoid it. But all of this runs directly counter to their whole world-view. Rather than questioning that world view, they simply assert that this can't be happening. They have to believe that something, anything—no matter how implausible—will stop it from happening. If we just get everyone together and talk, and we keep tinkering with diplomatic solutions until we find something that works, surely we can find a way to avoid a regional war in the Middle East. Can't we? Please?"

"Olmert's responsibility for inaction goes much further. The US administration had given Israel the green light to attack Syria. A senior military source has confirmed to Israel Insider that Israel did indeed receive a green light from Washington in this regard, but Olmert nixed it.

The scenario was that Syria, no military match for Israel, would face a rapid defeat, forcing it to run to Iran, with which it has a defense pact, to come to aid.

Iran, which would be significantly contained by the defeat of its sole ally in the region, would have found itself maneuvered between a rock and a hard place. If it chose to honor its commitment to Syria, it would face a war with Israel and the US, both with military capabilities far superior to Iran's. If Teheran opted to default on its commitment to Damascus, it would be construed by the entire region, including the restless Iranian population, as a conspicuous show of weakness by the regime. Fascist regimes such as that of the ayatollahs cannot easily afford to show that kind of weakness. [ Sharon's incapacitation could turn out to be a pivot of history... -ed. ] "

Winston Churchill's Favorite Bible Passage

Judges 5:

"1 After Ehud died, the Israelites once again did evil in the eyes of the LORD. 2 So the LORD sold them into the hands of Jabin, a king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Haggoyim. 3 Because he had nine hundred iron chariots and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years, they cried to the LORD for help.

4 Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading [a] Israel at that time. 5 She held court under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites came to her to have their disputes decided. 6 She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, "The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you: 'Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead the way to Mount Tabor. 7 I will lure Sisera, the commander of Jabin's army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.' "

8 Barak said to her, "If you go with me, I will go; but if you don't go with me, I won't go."

9 "Very well," Deborah said, "I will go with you. But because of the way you are going about this, [b] the honor will not be yours, for the LORD will hand Sisera over to a woman." So Deborah went with Barak to Kedesh, 10 where he summoned Zebulun and Naphtali. Ten thousand men followed him, and Deborah also went with him.

11 Now Heber the Kenite had left the other Kenites, the descendants of Hobab, Moses' brother-in-law, [c] and pitched his tent by the great tree in Zaanannim near Kedesh.

12 When they told Sisera that Barak son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor, 13 Sisera gathered together his nine hundred iron chariots and all the men with him, from Harosheth Haggoyim to the Kishon River.

14 Then Deborah said to Barak, "Go! This is the day the LORD has given Sisera into your hands. Has not the LORD gone ahead of you?" So Barak went down Mount Tabor, followed by ten thousand men. 15 At Barak's advance, the LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera abandoned his chariot and fled on foot. 16 But Barak pursued the chariots and army as far as Harosheth Haggoyim. All the troops of Sisera fell by the sword; not a man was left.

17 Sisera, however, fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there were friendly relations between Jabin king of Hazor and the clan of Heber the Kenite.

18 Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, "Come, my Lord , come right in. Don't be afraid." So he entered her tent, and she put a covering over him.

19 "I'm thirsty," he said. "Please give me some water." She opened a skin of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him up.

20 "Stand in the doorway of the tent," he told her. "If someone comes by and asks you, 'Is anyone here?' say 'No.' "

21 But Jael, Heber's wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died.

22 Barak came by in pursuit of Sisera, and Jael went out to meet him. "Come," she said, "I will show you the man you're looking for." So he went in with her, and there lay Sisera with the tent peg through his temple-dead.

23 On that day God subdued Jabin, the Canaanite king, before the Israelites. 24 And the hand of the Israelites grew stronger and stronger against Jabin, the Canaanite king, until they destroyed him. [ I'll let you research why... -ed. ] "

"The State Department has succeeded in the past year in making the Bush administration more Euro-friendly and U.N.-attentive than ever. For this, the president has reaped no political benefit at home--and the dangers continue to mount abroad. How Bush deals with Ahmadinejad's terror-supporting and nuclear-weapons-pursuing Iran will be the test.

Recent events leave me with little confidence that Bush will pass that test."

"Left-wing pundits and bloggers have insisted that Keller spiked the story to keep George Bush in office. Keller, however, has a different take on his decision. He insists that the news would have likely helped Bush rather than hurt him, and the public support for this program after its delayed revelation last December supports that analysis. John Kerry and the Democrats had castigated Bush for the lack of visible effort to find and track terrorists, and the program's exposure would have forced Kerry to recant and suddenly argue that Bush had been too enthusiastic about fighting terrorism, a tough pirouette to execute in a grueling presidential campaign."

Of Conspiracies and Geese

"If you've been paying attention, Olbermann's idiotic "theory" seems to be the new meme among those I can only characterize as geese who wake up in a new world everyday. They are trotting it out as some sort of hot, fresh and new idea that, you know, politicians might act like politicians and actually exploit stories that benefit their narrative, ideology and/or political point of view. Can you believe it?" [ I know I can't. -ed. ]

"So counter-protesters would be in favor of US and Israeli policy, and against terrorism. But al-Reuters describes them as “anti-Muslim.” [ How many times can you be shocked? just shocked! -ed. ] "

"War would not be useful or necessary if every man could bear the battle within rather than without. All human beings should be taught as part of their birthright that their greatest enemy is within and that their greatest struggle in life will always be with themselves. Both the Left and the Islamists, in their own ways, teach the very opposite of this quintessentially humanist doctrine: the enemy is outside, you are a victim, and you are entitled to the fulfillment of your fantasies.

Where are the leaders who teach not self esteem, but self conquest? What great Arab will explain to fellow Arabs that Israel is not the source of any of their problems--not a single one--and what great liberal will deliver the hard news to his fallow trivialers that George Bush is not what is obstructing their spiritual--much less material--fulfillment?"

"“Mr. Abulhassan made a statement to officers that he knew what they were doing was wrong and that he knew no one would ever use over 600 phones for legal purposes,” Vessels said. “(He also stated) he did not know for sure, but that he believed the phones and chips were being shipped overseas.” [ Once more I'm just shocked! -ed. ] "

""We know there are many obstacles, and we know the road is long. Albert Camus said that 'freedom is a long-distance race.' We're in that race for the duration," Bush said in those remarks."

Like I said, ghouls and vermin:

"i have been working in lebanon since all this started, and seeing the behavior of many of the lebanese wire service photographers has been a bit unsettling. while hajj has garnered a lot of attention for his doctoring of images digitally, whether guilty or not, i have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in peoples arms. these photographers have come away with powerful shots, that required no manipulation digitally, but instead, manipulation on a human level, and this itself is a bigger ethical problem."

And again:

"This is not peculiar to the United States. In Britain, the claim has been repeated endlessly that putting criminals in prison "doesn't work" and that various rehabilitation programs "in the community" are more successful in reducing criminals' repetition of their crimes.

When statistical data from the Home Office showed the direct opposite of what was being proclaimed by the Home Secretary, other high officials, the media, and academics, the solution was simple: Such data were no longer released."

Sowell strikes again:

"After getting a copy of the original study, I discovered that in the same study -- on the very same page -- statistics showed that (1) Mexican American women received even less prenatal care than black women and that (2) infant mortality rates among Mexican Americans were no higher than among whites.

A few pages further on, statistics showed that American women of Chinese, Japanese and Filipino ancestry also received less prenatal care than white women -- and had lower infant mortality rates than whites.

Apparently prenatal care was not the answer, though it was the kind of answer that suited the mindset of the liberal media and provided an occasion for them to wax indignant."

"It’s worth noting in this context that there is no similar flow of propagandistic images coming from the Israeli side of the border. That’s because one side — the democratically elected government of Israel — views death as a tragedy and the other — the Iranian financed terrorist organization Hezbollah — sees it as an opportunity. In this case, turning their own dead children into material creates an opportunity to cloud the fact that every Lebanese casualty, tragic as he or she is, was killed or injured as an unavoidable consequence of Israel’s pursuit of terrorists who use their own people as human shields. Every Israeli civilian killed or injured was the victim of a terrorist attack intended to harm civilians. That alone ought to wash away any blood-stained suggestion of moral equivalency."

"Unfortunately, if Resolution 1701 has any effect at all, its real meaning is that we now embark on a period in which Hezbollah will seize the opportunity to regroup and reload. The feeble and compromised mix of U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese army, which is the force authorized in this resolution, will fail to stop them. Iran and Syria will proceed apace with their terrorist infection and subjugation of Lebanon. The U.N. will wave around this latest piece of paper to try to prevent Israel from defending itself, or, for that matter, defending the rest of us against the “Death to Israel! Death to America!” Hezbollah agenda. Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, enjoying yet another confirmation of the U.N.’s mincing impotence in the face of guns, bombs, rockets, and terror, will continue his fevered preparations to roll out the nuclear bomb."

"What is clear is that Ahmadinejad does not see himself as an Iranian leader, but a Muslim prophet, using imagery to portray himself as a messiah for both Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims."

"To paraphrase Churchill, the brave people of Israel, who were ready to do their duty no matter what the cost, did not flinch under the strain of the past month. They know they have sustained a defeat, the consequences of which will travel far with them along their road; they know they have passed an awful milestone in their history. They know that the United Nations resolution is only the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to them -- not year by year, but day by day -- unless by a supreme reassertion of moral health and martial vigour, they arise again and take their stand for freedom as in the olden time."

"Today's letter is a stark reminder that the response to terror by some in the Muslim community is to suggest that there will be more, until the victims of terror change."

""The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong." --Winston Churchill ... looking over our shoulders ... again"

"You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war." --Winston Churchill on Neville Chamberlain's Munich Agreement with Hitler

"The Necessity for the Destruction of Israel: We see in Israel the vanguard of the United States in our Islamic world. It is the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve. This enemy is the greatest danger to our future generations and to the destiny of our lands, particularly as it glorifies the ideas of settlement and expansion, initiated in Palestine, and yearning outward to the extension of the Great Israel, from the Euphrates to the Nile. Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated. We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine. … [ Just exactly what part of the Hezbollah charter doesn't W understand? -ed. ] "

"When it is finally written — probably in Arabic — the history of the war on terror will convey one over-arching lesson: One side fought with conviction; the other developed a conviction against fighting."

"The same Democrats who oppose the war in Iraq tend to oppose the National Security Agency surveillance program, condemn aggressive interrogations, and complain about the Patriot Act. It is all part of a worldview that wishes away dangers when they demand philosophically uncongenial responses, defined as roughly anything that doesn’t involve shoveling federal money to localities.

We will learn more about how the Brits managed to unravel the airline plot in the coming days, but surely it involved extensive monitoring and the strictest secrecy, capped off by an act of preemption when Scotland Yard arrested the plotters. All of these have been in a bad odor among liberals lately. They will say they support them in this case, never mind that they look askance at them during our stretches of complacency. [ Lowry gives them too much credit. They largely think this whole thing was the result of Karl Rove hypnotizing Tony Blair and the whole British police... -ed. ] "

"But perhaps Olmert has one of two tricks up his sleeve: (1) Once the U.N. resolution is passed and enforced, the Lebanese government will face severe U.S. and French pressure to sign a peace treaty with Israel, which would be a huge blow to the Party of God/Syria/Iran axis; or (2) The U.S. has promised Israel that it will not allow Iran to get nukes, but the price of this is having to agree to this resolution, to retain French support for pressure on, and potentially military action against, Iran. [ I suppose I could put on my rose colored glasses and squint. But they were stepped on and smashed long ago I'm afraid. It's more likely that everyone is still panicked about August 22nd and wants to appear fauxtogenic in their final portraits. The ones illuminated by the Iranian nuclear test over Israel and who knows where else... -ed. ] "

But note that my NYeT SWIFT post pointing to Power Line's classic remains second for now. It's the definitive post about why we will never defeat the Islamofascists using financial measures, law enforcement and the courts as the Libs insist. (Forget this hateful war stuff. BusHitler and all that.) The fact that the Times would blow the SWIFT program after being implored by both co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission not to puts the utter lie to that. That's just a boat-load of hypocrisy after months of diatribes about how stupid W was for not immediately implementing the 9/11 Commission's recommendations.

"A Haaretz op-ed sarcastically asks, "after all, why did we embark on the war, if not to ensure that French soldiers will protect Israel from the Hezbollah rocket battery.""

"They [the AP] want us to know that Salam Daher would never be involved in such a thing as propaganda for Hizballah. [ AP: All Propaganda. Luckily their initials aren't DCAE. Then I'd have to call them "Dead Child Abuser Enablers". Follow the link and watch the video. I can't figure out whether it's worse to abuse dead children or live ones. But I do know that anyone who does either should be locked away forever. And anyone who sees something like this and doesn't make the abuse the story has quite simply lost their humanity. They may look like humans. But so did Hitler and Stalin. My bet is that AP will never apologize for this. Because if they did they would have to commit suicide like the cretinous vermin they joyously enable. -ed. ] "

"Just as Christianity must denounce any connection with such churches as neo-nazi abominations such as the Identity Church movement in no uncertain terms, so it falls on main-stream Islam to denounce the IF movement. Until and unless they do that and do it in a manner which unmistakably disassociates them from those who, at this point are successfully identifying their movement with the religion of Islam, they will continue to hear the term which best describes the group(s) with which we are at war.

Islamic fascists. [ Now where have I heard of Amin Al-Husseini before? But I don't think they also pointed out that he mentored Arafat (as I also have -- look right). -ed. ] "

"In short, Democrats who claim to want "focus" on the war on terror have wanted it fought without the intelligence, interrogation and detention tools necessary to win it. And if they cite "cooperation" with our allies as some kind of magical answer, they should be reminded that the British and other European legal systems generally permit far more intrusive surveillance and detention policies than the Bush Administration has ever contemplated. [ Reality is a harsh thing, what old chap? -ed. ] "

""We can only do," I must warn her, and you. "We can only do, and pray, that when we are done we may be forgiven.""

"Then of course as STRATFOR pointed out, "jihadists will find another alternative" method of attack. "Government's invariable response to terrorism," another Samizdata commenter said, "is a new set of restrictions on the previously innocuous behavior of ordinary citizens". Eventually the day may come when whole populations are wandering around in the functional equivalent of prison clothes and leading their lives under maximum security conditions without even being able to mention how they came to that unfortunate state. [ Wretchard is on a roll. And the first comment is: "would it not be easier to start profiling? ask el al...." Wouldn't you just know it? -ed. ] "

"“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.”"

"But instead, they sit on their dunghill crowing, denigrating us bloggers and branding us "conspiracy theorists" and worse, covering up what we now know to be widespread malpractice that has been going on for a long, long time. Do they think we are all that stupid? [ I'd say eureferendum has a case. The video is absolutely stunning. Beyond that in fact. How long will AP stonewall? -ed. ] "

The Times of London notes this in their airline bombing plot coverage:

"Michael Chertoff, the US Homeland Security Secretary, said that the British plot was “getting really quite close to the execution stage”. For British and American crisis planners, the date August 22 looms large. This year it corresponds in the Islamic calendar to the day in 1427 which Muslims commemorate as when Muhammad took flight on the winged horse Buraq to the “furthest mosque”, usually assumed to be Jerusalem. Bernard Lewis, an expert on the Middle East, writes: “This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world.”

President Ahmadinejad of Iran has cited August 22 as the date on which he will give his final answer on nuclear development. The suggestion that the foiled British plot involved blowing up aircraft over towns and cities corresponds with a longstanding ambition held by al-Qaeda. [ Where have I heard August 22nd before? We can only pray that this is what Ahmadinejad was going for -- but I remain skeptical we've seen anything yet... -ed. ] "

"Is it the horrendous noise? The speed? The condensation trails?” said one unnamed source close to the panel, listing some of the areas of inquiry the experts plan to pursue. “Because if it’s any of those things, we can get to work on engineering changes to make airplanes more tolerable to our Muslim brothers."

Did I forget to mention August 22nd today?

"Is Iran planning an apocalyptic strike against Israel and/or the United States for August 22? If so, what should the U.S. do to protect Americans and our ally? Such questions are worrying a growing number of officials in the White House, at the CIA, and at the Pentagon, and for good reason.

As a devout Shiite Muslim, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is telling colleagues in Tehran that he believes the end of the world is rapidly approaching. He also believes that the way to hasten the coming of the Islamic Messiah known as the “Hidden Imam” or the “Mahdi” is to launch a catastrophic global jihad, first against Israel (the “little Satan”) and then against the U.S. (the “Great Satan”). What’s more, Ahmadinejad is widely believed to be pursuing nuclear weapons that would give him the ability to carry out his apocalyptic religious views. Some experts even speculate that Iran may already have several atomic bombs and the means to deliver them. [ It would seem to me that the "first against Israel" part is already in progress -- n'est pas? -ed. ] "

Welcome to dead child abuse. Hezzbollah style. Un. F***in. Believable.

Netanyahu on the Tinfoil Apocalyphate

"For Netanyahu, Israel is a latter-day Czechoslovakia, which deluded and desperately anti-war European powers, led by Neville Chamberlain, sacrificed to the Nazis in 1938 because of the German-speaking minority in Sudetenland, whom he compares with today’s Palestinians. ‘And, yes, there was apologetics and, yes, there was appeasement and, yes, there was pressure on a small resistant democracy in the face of this German onslaught. It was called Czechoslovakia at the time. And, yes, there were articles in the British press condemning Czechoslovakia for inciting a German response because of the denial of the rights of the Sudeten Germans. Do you want to go on with this?’

Netanyahu rejects the comparison between radical Islamic terrorists and communists. The main difference, he argues, is that the communists were rational when it came to foreign policy, putting their survival first and always backing down at the last moment, as shown in the Cuban missile crisis. This was not true of the Iranian regime, he said, arguing that they were trying to prompt the return of the Hidden Imam, an event which Shiites believe would be accompanied by an apocalypse. ‘Is it possible in the 21st century to have a resurrection of the religious wars that we thought had ended in the 17th century? Yes, it’s possible. This is what is going on.’"

"Zombie proposes a taxonomy according to which there are four separate varieties of photo fraud, with examples of each..."

"How, then, can we understand the imperishable belief that Jews function as an arrogant, imperious, overbearing people? In a few words, that resentment stems in truth from the age-old Jewish refusal to abandon our separate identity, our irreducible distinctiveness through the millennia. My friends Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin provide the most compelling exposition on this dynamic in their invaluable book, Why the Jews?, recently reissued. [ You need to read this book if you haven't. -ed. ]

In any event, the logic becomes most accessible when considered in personal, intimate terms. If a small group among your neighbors refuses invitations to worship in your churches and mosques, to eat the food you prepare in your homes, to marry your daughters, to embrace your nationalisms, or to share your enthusiasm for the ultimate, universally applicable perfection of your Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Catholic, Islamic, Nazi or Communist worldview, then it’s all but certain you will resent the members of that stubborn group – and assume that they exclude themselves from elements of your society due to an innate, obnoxious sense of superiority. [ In other words, they're not part of the "in" crowd. And as everyone knows, "it's not cool to be smart"... -ed. ] "

"These are dark times for the world: we are on the brink of the nuclearization of ancient pathologies. It’s a very strange feeling to read 19th-century novels and travelogues and recognize the old psychoses currently re-emerging in even more preposterous forms. I’m a bit behind in responding to the gazillion Jews-are-to-blame-for-everything emails, but when I do I usually say I take a relaxed view of hatred but take my advice and don’t get over-invested in it. There’s a very sharp short book by Andrew Roberts called Hitler And Churchill: Secrets of Leadership and, as you go through it, you realize that the key difference between the two is that the prime minister had a very shrewd understanding of what the Führer was like and the Führer had absolutely no clue about the prime minister. To Hitler, Churchill was "that puppet of Jewry": he didn’t offer that as a bit of rhetorical red meat for the Saturday-night Nuremberg crowd, but as a serious analysis in the privacy of his study. That’s the problem with full-blown Jew-hatred: it’s not just a toxic frosting on what may otherwise be a perfectly agreeable cake, so much as a reliable indicator that your entire worldview has been infected. Which is why it doesn’t usually work out so well for the Jew-haters. "I have a premonition that will not leave me," wrote Eric Hoffer, America’s great longshoreman philosopher, after the ’67 war. "As it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.""

Don't mess with the Frogman... (HT LGF)

"The Western press -- usually so careful to condemn hate speech -- is utterly silent about Arab racism. But a European paper recently published a cartoon portraying Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a Nazi, secure that no rabbi would issue threats that could cost the editors their heads."

"We cannot know how the war will develop; only that it will. It will be quite unlike previous world wars. We can only observe that we are now in transition from the terrorist stage, to the guerrilla warfare stage. I can only guess, but would think the next threshold will be crossed when a country, most likely Iran, brings true "weapons of mass destruction" into play. The word "threshold" could mislead. Each new stage adds another layer, so that the terrorism will continue, joined to guerrilla war; and then both will continue, with WMD added.

Does that sound alarmist to you? If so, I can only reply, wake up, gentle reader. The very people who guard you in your sleep are alarmed on your behalf."

"Why is America waiting to be attacked by Iran? Why do we sit on the sidelines while Tehran makes war on our ally Israel in order to provoke America to join the fighting, first against Syria and then against Tehran itself? Why do we listen to the European appeasers as they pretend the Lebanon front is a regional conflict, a national liberation contest, when it is demonstrably the prelude to the wider war — the Spain 1936 to the continental war of 1939? What is the explanation for America's willful fiction that the United Nations Security Council can engineer an accommodation in Lebanon, when it is vivid to every member state that this is a replay of September 1938, when Europe fed Hitler the Sudetenland as the U.N. now wants to feed the jihadists the sovereignty of Israel?"

"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! [ Another Bob quotes Jesus. -ed. ] "

"The increasingly unstable behavior of the Iranian government has made them a great danger. If the Russians and Chinese continue to provide them technological assistance and diplomatic cover, then the West will have some decisions to make about their commitment to the international institutions that these three nations leverage to stymie the West. We cannot pretend any longer that our diplomatic engagement with Russia and China over Iran will ever result in the steps necessary to rein in the mullahcracy before it does something very, very crazy. [ Did I mention August 22nd yet? -ed. ] "

"What year is this? 1948?"

The 36 Percent Problem

"Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon or took no action to stop them "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East." [ Did I forget to mention that these people are nuttier than cuckoo clocks? -ed. ]

"One out of three sounds high, but that may very well be right," said Lee Hamilton, former vice chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, aka the 9/11 Commission. That congressionally appointed investigation concluded federal officials bungled their attempts to prevent, but did not participate in, the attacks by al-Qaida five years ago.

The poll also found 16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning jet fuel, were the real reason the massive Twin Towers collapsed. [ OK. Now I have the shivers. You're telling me that 1 out of every 6 people I pass on the street in America is completely unhinged from reality. Bonkers. Nuts. Rubber room material. And worse yet, as far as I can tell, they're the ones saying that we're supposed to negotiate assiduously with genocidal lunatics like Ahmedinejad? And sane people are supposed to smile politely and tell them how "smart" they are? Marx was pretty nuts himself, but he was quite right about the second time being a farce... -ed. ] "

UPDATE: Sure enough, 51% of Dems believe it as opposed to 20% or less Repubs... Surprise, surprise...

ANOTHER UPDATE: You can find the rabies antidote here.

"But to return to the mindset that allows, indeed effectively encourages, such photography, it is worth noting that in order to justify this kind of behavior... hiring the heavily biased... to yourself, you have to pretend you are doing it for a "greater good." In this case that would not seem to be easy since Hezbollah is well known to be a religious fascist organization with sub-Medieval values rooted in misogyny, homophobia and the utter defeat of the Enlightenment. So how then do you find this "greater good" outside the financial viability of your institution? What mind games do you have to do to yourself? What contortions? And yet somehow they manage. Their own essential self-loathing (for this is what you find all over Reuters, the Guardian and the BBC) allows them to project out their self-disgust onto America and Israel, as if those nations, not Hezbollah, were the cause of the terror organization's activities, as if the 15,000 missiles hidden in Lebanon were some Mossad trick and the rise of the nuclear mullahs was simply a "normal" reaction to American imperialism. As if. [ As if. -ed. ]

Today, for the moment, these media are feeling on the defensive. May they stay that way until they reform. [ Ain't gonna happen. The terrorists will still patronize them. Or do you think they'll patronize LGF instead? -ed. ] "

"The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government, according to a book to be released later this month by Westminster John Knox Press -- a division of the denominational publisher for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action is the third book on the subject [ Third. You mean like 3^thrd? Oh brother. -ed. ] by David Ray Griffin, a professor emeritus of theology at Claremont School of Theology who is also a well-published and prominent process theologian. [ And some of our churches are on the other side as well. If not nuttier than cuckoo-clocks. Or possibly both. ... It's at best a mixed blessing that the two aren't mutually exclusive. -ed. ] "

"The Reuters story keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. Take a look at the progression of Adnan Hajj photographs posted by John at Power Line. The images all purport to show the aftermath of attacks on Qasmiya Bridge near the major Lebanese city of Tyre. However, the sequence shows odd states of repair after supposed devastation, and in some cases look like entirely different sites.

What has become apparent that Reuters has no editorial process for reviewing the photographs they get from their photojournalist stringers. The wire service relies on the photographer for the captioning, and it looks like they just act as an uncritical conduit between the photographer and the newspapers Reuters services. [ Captain Ed is far too generous. al-Reuters is on the other side. -ed. ] After discovering more than one questionable photograph, Reuters has withdrawn all of Hajj's photos -- but they still have not explained how their supposedly professional editorial checks failed to detect these obvious problems with Hajj and his work."

"One wonders if the average anti-Semite even knows that there are fewer than 15 million Jews in the entire world, which represents just .227% of the population. Look at Afghanistan. It’s probably safe to assume that they are just as anti-Semitic as any other Muslim country, and yet, there is exactly one Jew living there. His name is Sy Goldberg, and he is very lonely and frightened. And yet, he has complete control of Afghan banking and media, and nobody can get a decent pastrami on rye without going through him."

"Just let that sink in for a moment. Israel has constantly warned its citizens to stay in bunkers, and has carried out what most would say is a reasonably thorough air campaign to knock out Hezbollah rocket launchers. Hezbollah, on the other hand, deliberately locates its rocket launchers in civilian neighborhoods, fires from inside houses, and constantly parades the corpses of people who may or may not have been killed in air attacks before cameras for propaganda purposes. But in Ricks's twisted world-view, it's Israel that is deliberately getting its own people killed so that it can occupy the "moral high ground."

As an added bit of insanity, it is Israel, not Hezbollah, that skillfully manipulates world opinion by being "sophisticated in their handling of the media." But part of Israel's sophisticated media campaign consists of shooting at reporters!"

"Apparently, amazingly, dispiritingly, it all works. At least in the short run, dishonesty pays. Dissembling pays. Forgetting your past writings and statements pays. Condemning those with whom you once agreed pays. Phony self-flagellation followed by self-righteous self-congratulation pays. The only thing that doesn't pay is honesty. If Joe Lieberman loses, it will not be because he supported the war or even because he still supports it. It will be because he refused to choose one of the many dishonorable paths open to him to salvage his political career.

He is the last honest man, and he may pay the price for it. At least he will be able to sleep at night. And he can take some solace in knowing that history, at least an honest history, will be kinder to him than was his own party."

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. [ neo again! She has her hands directly on it! -ed. ] "

I haven't pointed to the great work that neo-neocon is doing. She has reprinted Eric Hoffer's spine chilling 1968 essay on Israel:

"Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general. I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us."

"Rieff's rebuttal offers not a single instance of a conservative who is urging the administration to invade Iran or Syria, let alone an entire movement of such conservatives. [ Well actually, I'd be for it if I could figure out an angle that it would help stop the coming catastrophe. But I think it would just be a good way to get huge numbers of our troops killed. And I'm a nobody so I don't count in this debate of course ;) Liberals (mostly witlessly) believe in letting things build up until you have a really huge war (all the while deluding themselves that there won't be one; peace, love and understanding with the "noble savages", etc.). Remember Chamberlain and WWII? "Land for peace" and all that deja-vu'ish buncombe?? Conservatives tend to have an unconscious belief in something more akin to trying to relieve the stress of "political plate tectonics" even if that means a (hopefully smaller) war(s) sooner or more often. -ed. ] "

WMD watch:

""Iran's plot to mine uranium in Africa" and Other Headlines from the War

Posted by Hugh Hewitt | 2:09 PM

That's the headline in the Times of London. Powerline notes the need to "send Joe Wilson to Tanzania so he can come back and explain why this report can't possibly be true.""

"I suspect that we will one day speak of the war in Iraq the way we speak of the Spanish Civil War -- that is, rarely by comparison to the greater war that followed it. Peace is not in the cards. Things are going to get worse. Our enemies are glad to employ terrorists, who will try to bring the war to our homes. The wise man will prepare his sword, and the arm that may wield it."

"JOHN adds: Another example of the same phenomenon--not an identical photo, but two photos of the same woman, obviously taken at more or less the same time but published two weeks apart--in each case with a caption saying that she had lost her house to an Israeli bomb the night before! It's on Drinking From Home. It is now obvious that this is a major scandal, and that Reuters has allowed itself to be used as a vehicle for publishing the crudest forms of Hezbollah propaganda."

Not looking good, part 34987:

"To them, and to hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world, watching Al Jazeera or its like on their TV screens, it looks like Iran is winning one glorious Islamist victory after another, striking blow after paralyzing blow at the once-mighty giant of the Christian West, while we cower in fear, afraid to strike back. We look like losers, while Iran looks invincible, and that image of invincibility is the most effective weapon Iran has in its hugely successful battle for the allegiance of the Muslim masses everywhere. Most Americans are still unaware of Iran’s promise to light up the skies with a great surprise on August 22, but Muslims everywhere are keenly aware of it; most await the day with growing excitement."

"Reuters owes us an explanation -- in fact, a couple of them. First, how did the editors at Reuters manage to miss the crude alterations Hajj made to the image in question? Is it because his doctoring helped bolster their own agenda in covering this war? Second and even more importantly, why has Reuters not pulled all Hajj images from their service? If he was willing to doctor his photos with Photoshop, why would anyone trust him not to stage his other efforts at photojournalism for his own political purposes?"

"[A]cross the nation, public school students are being indoctrinated in "health" classes and other venues to treat their families with skepticism and to regard traditional mores as "dysfunctional." Liberals have achieved what the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci only dreamed about: They have completed "the long march through the institutions" and now control the commanding heights of the culture. Conservatives are going to have to figure out the same trick if they do not want to see the country drift irrevocably to the left.

While liberal teachers preach, conservative parents must teach their own kids to become screenwriters, journalists, professors, teachers and producers. The rallying cry of Gramsci's acolytes was "Capture the culture." Ours should be "Recapture the culture.""

And one of the greatest totalitarians of all times invented Photoshopping before there was a Photoshop. Go check out the picture. Bloody minds think alike:

"Stalin's bloody reign is not without certain irony. Nikolai Yezhov, the young man strolling with Stalin, is shot in 1940. It seems only fitting that when Yezhov is removed from the photograph he is replaced by the waters of the Moscow-Volga Canal. Yezhov was commissar of water transport."

And now seems an appropriate time to remember that the EneMedia says there were no WMDs in Iraq. Absolutely none. Well, other than the hundreds of chemical weapons artillery shells they've been finding. But those were all absolutely, positively OLD. Before Gulf War I you know. Inneffectual. Little incidents like Halabja don't count. Did I mention that Halabja happened just before Gulf War I? Saddam, like a Monty Python character, "got better". You might also believe that serial murdering child rapists -- come to think of it not quite a sufficient description for the psychopathy of Saddam -- can "get better" too. I would humbly suggest that you may be a bit naive:

"This Iraqi person, a former counselor at Iraqi embassies, has strong connections with Iraqi embassy in Syria, he knows all Iraqi intelligence men there, and he has no idea that I am working with the Iraqi opposition in Syria.

I used to visit him daily during that period to listen to the important news. When the trucks arrived to Syria, I visited him, told him “Iraqi weapons got inside Syria," he replied “who told you." I said “I have my own resources," he replied “don’t tell any one about that because actually it is inside.""

Luckily, we can be absolutely positive that they won't be used on Israel. The heirs of Amin Al-Husseini could never even consider such a thing! At least, not until August 22nd or so...

"Well, I am beginning to think Abu Chadi is more than rescue worker/civil defense worker/truck driver/mortician. He has all the makings of Hezbollah’s version of Josef Goebbels - a PR agent."

Goldstein strikes:

"UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein looks at the Reuters CYA Statement and decides it “is not too farfetched, I don’t think. After all, I once tried to dust my DVD player with only a desklamp on, and the next morning I noticed that I’d somehow created five new DVD players."

Centerfeud: First Rathergate, Now Reutersgate

The only thing missing is the superscript ^th. And did I forget to mention PICTURE KILL? Centerfeud has a summary:

"No one is questioning the media's right to cover the destruction in Lebanon, and to provide the critical Lebanese perspective of the damage that is being wrought by Israel's attacks. But it is irresponsible to hand a megaphone to Hezbollah, or to report without establishing the motives of the people supplying the information. Part of Hezbollah's war-fighting strategy is to milk every possible casualty for its propaganda potential, and there is growing skepticism that some (certainly by no means all!) of the images of dead Lebanese civilans are manufactured or manipulated for consumption of both Arab and Western media. This technique of staging and manuipulating media imagery has been honed to an art form by Palestinian propagandists and was exposed in a [film satirizing a] 60-minutes segment titled "Pallywood" [the film is called "Pallywood", not the 60 minutes segment being sartirized]."

"Why is it that the American and European media assume that Muslims -- some of the most tribally, ethnically loyal people on the face of the earth -- buy into this standard of complete robotic objectivity, when they can't even manage to convince their fellow Americans it's the proper ethics of journalism?"

"“The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under,” said Moira Whittle, the head of public relations for Reuters.

“This represents a serious breach of Reuters’ standards and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by him,” Whittle said in a statement issued in London. Hajj worked for Reuters as a non-staff freelance, or contributing photographer, from 1993 until 2003 and again since April 2005.

Notice they don’t accept any of the blame themselves, even though any competent editor should have noticed the fraudulent nature of this photograph long before it reached the newswires."

"When Israel hit a UNIFIL/UNTSO post a couple of weeks ago, Kofi Annan went on worldwide television to express his anger at the "deliberate targeting" of UN personnel by the IDF. He demanded access to the area for an independent UN investigation. Only when Canada, whose soldier was among the four dead, insisted that Israel had not deliberately targeted the UN position but a Hezbollah launching site that the UN had allowed them to build nearby did Annan finally shut up.

Now Hezbollah has attacked and injured a UNIFIL contingent -- and where is Kofi Annan's outrage? Where is the worldwide media coverage? Where is the global diplomatic condemnation?

Oh, wait a minute -- Hezbollah aren't Jooooooooooos. I forgot."

They Already Knew The Colonists Were Fed Up

UPDATE: Second no more. August 22nd approacheth. (8/15)

Power Line has the definitive post on SWIFTgate.

Stolen shamelessly in it's entirety for your viewing enjoyment.

Benedict Lichtblau indeed.

---------------
The NYeT has me so steaming that this is going to ride on top until at least the war with Iran gets into full stride.

SWIFTgate makes RatherGate look like a tempest in a teacup. Of course, the EneMedia didn't understand squat about that either. Their idea of logical prowess is some pimple-faced twenty-something thinking that Microsoft Word was invented in the 1960s.

UPDATE: Did I forget to mention that the the war with Iran is getting a lot closer to full stride? You just might have noticed that from the focus of my posts. But NYeT has such a "special" place in my heart that I can't knock it from near the top of the hill just yet...

THERAPEUTICS UPDATE: I'm also adding today's Muir near the top of the blog for a while. Humor therapy is becoming mandatory these days...



THE INEVITABLE FAUXTOGRAPHIC UPDATE: And you were wondering: Why does the NYeT stay near the top with the war in full swing and all the fauxtographic collateral damage going on? Aren't we just wasting useless pixels on the irrelevant at this point? Ahh. But it was only a matter of time before they were back in the backward-facing saddle: "Did he collapse from heat exhaustion? Or did the director here simply decided the production was long on rescuers and short on corpses?"

Scrappleface rocks:

"(2006-08-05) — In what his opponent called a “cynical last-ditch ploy” to win the August 8 Democrat senatorial primary, Sen. Joe Lieberman today endorsed the establishment of a Muslim caliphate and the creation of a vast Islamic homeland in the middle east, including the territory now occupied by the state of Israel.

***

A unnamed source at the Democrat National Committee said he expects the race to tighten considerably now that voters must choose between two “party-line Democrats.”"

"But it is necessary to search, via Internet, for the Western media do not report on such things. The theory being, according to several journalists with whom I have discussed this, that the material is too “inflammatory”, and might prejudice people against Palestinian or other Muslims. They do not seem to realize that it might be not only inflammatory, but outrageously misleading, to focus obsessively on Israel's unintended civilian victims, when the country is defending itself against terrorists who have fired several thousand missiles, quite intentionally, at Israeli civilian targets."

Hojjatieh again. This is a must read. No excuses. Click through now:

"Worshippers of the Twelfth Imam are knows as the Twelvers; and chief among them is Ahmadinejad and the leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Before the revolution, Ahmadinejad belonged to a messianic cult known as Hojjatieh, later disbanded, which believed that chaos will hasten the return of the Mahdi. Today, such extreme conviction is shot through the Tehran regime, especially among the privy council called the Partisans of the Mahdi; and the televising of the combat on the Lebanon front looks to vindicate the prophesy.

When Ahmadinejad says, "Lebanon is the scene of an historic test, which will determine the future of humanity," he is speaking not in the hyperbole of a tyrant but in the language of messianic faith.

What this means now is that the Tehran regime is neither surprised nor intimidated by the scale of the Israeli response to the provocations in Gaza and Lebanon."

Picture Kill!

"Thanks to the Israeli reader who alerts us to YnetNews.com's update on the Reuters photo alteration that we noted in "Reuters calls the doctor" last night: "Reuters admits altering Beirut photo." As John noted last night, the photographer whom Reuters credited on the photo is the same man who shot some of the famous propaganda images from Qana. Reader William Katz writes:

The key questions: What else has been faked? What else has been manipulated? Who are the people hired by Western news agencies to report from Lebanon? What are their backgrounds? It's time to look even more carefully at Qana."

"Twenty-eight dead civilians in a village from which 150 Katyusha rockets have been launched against Israel doesn't seem "disproportionate" to me. What's "disproportionate" is the idea that civilian life should be allowed to proceed normally in what is, in fact, a terrorist launching platform."