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"The mirage towards which you are driving your people's sons"

To Osama's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri (right) -- blinded by his hatred of all things Western -- Pope Benedict is a "charlatan," while to Soumaya Ghannoushi (left) -- an aljazeera.net columnist "currently completing a doctorate thesis on the medieval origins of the Orientalist discourse" -- her vision distorted with postmodern fairy dust -- "The Pope's response to the anger his statements sparked in the Muslim world was more offensive than the statements themselves. He apologised not for what he said, but for Muslims' failure to grasp the intended meaning . . . Islam is still perceived as the other, the embodiment of evil."

"Why don't you tell them how many million citizens of America and its allies you intend to kill in search of the imaginary victory and in breathless pursuit of the mirage towards which you are driving your people's sons in order to increase your profits?" taunts the psychologically damaged Ayman al-Zawahiri, projecting his own demons onto the Leader of the Free World in a video posted yesterday on the internet and released by the Virginia-based IntelCenter. According to David Asman on FoxNews, Zawahiri's hysterical outburst kept the Dow from ending at an all-time high this afternoon. Darn. That would have been such a nice end-of-quarter thing, not to mention Neil Cavuto's promised graphics extravaganza when the all-time high does occur:

Aljazeera reports that Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two, in a new video message has called US President George Bush a liar who had failed in his war against al-Qaeda.

Oooh. Ayman reads the New York Times. What a big boy. But one thing the angry old gynophobe missed that's telling. He speaks of "your people's sons" but not of our daughters. Like his hero Sayyid Qutb -- whom he called "the most prominent theoretician of the fundamentalist movements" -- Ayman has always had a woman problem (She made me do it, Lord). As we wrote a couple of years back:

Remarkable how the misogynist fantasies of a couple of dystopic guys like Mussa Sadr Al-Sadr and Ayman Zawahiri can infect entire generations of muslim youngsters in much the same way that Nazi and marxist ideologies infected everyday folk in the last century.

No question Ayman has a way with words:

Bush, O failure and liar, why don't you be courageous for once and confront your people and tell them the truth about your losses in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We guess that passes for tough talk in some circles. Nancy Pelosi, listen up. Predictably, Zawahiri has nothing good to say about the Holy Father -- the Pope who loves cats and Mozart -- either:

Al-Zawahiri also called Pope Benedict a "charlatan" because of his remarks on Islam.

"This charlatan accused Islam of being incompatible with rationality while forgetting that his own Christianity is unacceptable to a sensible mind."

Uh, huh. Same old same old. I'll kill you if you call me a killer. If you haven't already -- we know Ayman hasn't and never will as it might disrupt his self-affirming cognitive dissonance -- be sure to read Lee Harris's deeply satisfying take on what Papa Ratzi is really up to in his "Socrates or Muhammad?" at The Weekly Standard [via Miss Kelly]. Our awesome nephew/godson, a professor of philosophy whose first book -- Rousseau's Theory of Freedom -- we blogged here, comments on Harris's thesis:

I'm not sure what would be left of organized religion if its adherents seriously engaged in "self-critical examination of their own beliefs," but it's nice anyway to see the Pope coming out on the side of reason and argumentation. If the Pope is joining forces with the spirit of Socrates against fundamentalist Islam, then I guess it's true that my enemy's enemy is my friend.

Echoes of Oriana Fallaci's "If an atheist and a pope can think the same things, there must be something true." One final thought on the bottomless pit of Islamofascist hypersensitivity to perceived insults. There may be a light at the end of the Eurabian tunnel, and it may have something to do with Mozart. You probably heard the story about Berlin's Deutsche Opera company's decision the other day to preemptively deschedule Mozart's opera "Idomeneo," trendily staged -- to the disgust of at least one Mozart purist -- with the severed heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and you know who [pbuh] -- because of dhimmitudinous fears of Islamist reprisals. Now it turns out German opera lovers are just saying no:

Wolfgang Schäuble, interior minister and the country's top security official, said on Wednesday that 30 government and Muslim representatives, meeting in Berlin to launch a three-year dialogue forum, had "spoken out unanimously" that the opera should be performed as scheduled in November . . .

The support offered to the opera by the German-Islam Conference, the dialogue forum established on Wednesday and set to run for at least two years, showed that Muslim groups in Germany rejected extremism and supported artistic freedom, Mr Schäuble said.

We happened to surf into a performance of Mozart's "Mass in C Minor" -- "taped live at the Knight’s Hall in Wolfegg, Germany" -- in the wee hours on Eternal World Television Network (EWTN) this morning. It brought to mind William Congreve's oft-misquoted quotable quote:

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

Is it true, as Darul Ifta of Ask the Imam says, that "music has been condemned strongly in the Qur'aan and Hadith"? Could that be the key to what's wrong with these people?

"Shaking off the old clothes of rigid received ideas and alliances"

"Your unfair and uneven use of the front page is reprehensible," writes an irate Hartford Courant reader, complaining that "This is the second day in a row that The Courant has featured Joe Lieberman [center inset], complete with large color photo on the front page." Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, right, with Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman, speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

News Flash 9/29/06: Roger's Pajamas Media video interview (pre-blogged here yesterday, below) with Senator Lieberman is now available for your listening -- and viewing -- pleasure. Transcript here. Says the lawmaker, right on cue:

The fastest growing political party in America is no party, which is to say, that the fastest growing group of voters are unaffiliated with either party. That’s a marked statement on the two major parties.

"In response to one of my questions, the Senator allowed that he felt running as an independent to be 'empowering,'" writes Roger L. Simon in a totally fascinating teaser for his forthcoming exclusive Pajamas Media interview with Joey Lieberman:

I could see in his eyes that he meant that in deep way. I empathized. I know from my own life how empowering shaking off the old clothes of rigid received ideas and alliances can be. At best, you can be reborn. Not a bad deal for someone whose age has a 6 in front of it.

Like the heart that loves, the heart that shakes off "the old clothes of rigid received ideas and alliances" is forever young. We are particularly thrilled with Joey's epiphany, as those ratty old clothes he donned during his brief and unseemly affair with the "Inconvenient Gasbag" in Election 2000 were ill fitting, indeed. Dr. Sanity's latest post, as always, clarifies:

As long as the left continues to live in the world of denial and play their rhetorical games and use their non-logic to justify the unjustifiable; to tolerate the intolerable; and support the unsupportable; then I will continue to blog and expose their motives and hidden agendas; and do everything I can to prevent them from regaining political power.

This means that no matter how badly I think of the current crop of Republicans -- and I do think very badly of them -- when the alternative is the Party of Denial -- better known as the Democrats and the loud lunatic fringe that they cater to -- then the Republicans are going to get my vote every time. Where once I had the luxury of voting for third party candidates (e.g. libertarian), the stakes are far too crucial now to waste my votes.

Look for Roger's full interview on Pajamas Media soon in video, podcast and text forms. We can't wait. Fun fact: Drudge linked Roger's teaser this afternoon with a classically provocative headline:

LIEBERMAN ON GORE: 'I can forgive . . . but I probably won't forget.'

It caused PJM to crash for a while, but what a way to go. Roger, Roger.

Update: Frosting on the cake. The Professor links.

We took the opportunity to do a little catblogging

After a quick check of the backup camera's manual, we remembered to use the flash for this backlit photo of -- in Tuck's words -- Admiral Baby Cakes taking command.

Getting back up to speed with the fallback digital camera -- a workmanlike Hewlett-Packard [Those dirty rotten scoundrels!] Photosmart 735 -- while our first love, the Pentax Optio 450, visits the spa for its annual renewal in Golden, Colorado, we took the opportunity to do a little catblogging.

Between rounds of superball this morning, Tiny performs a Muybridge trot across the kitchen counter to greet her opponent.

If only we'd reread the H-P manual earlier, we would have known when Tiny initiated a rousing game of crazyball just after breakfast to use the "burst" feature to capture multiple still pictures "as long as the shutter button is held down." As it was, we just kept reclicking and hoping for the best.

"I happened to be peeking through a gap in the fence with my camera at the moment the man jumped," said photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who "pioneered the art of street photography." Similarly, we happened to be peeking into the kitchen this morning at the moment Tiny jumped -- and caught -- a superball.

By clicking and clicking as fast as we could, turning our camera's eye as nimbly as we could to follow Tiny while she pursued her quarry -- up onto counter, down onto floor and back again across the kitchen landscape -- even without the "burst" feature, we lucked out and caught a stop-motion Cartier-Bresson moment.

Update: For more Cartier-Bresson moments, click on over to Carnival of the Cats #131 at House of Chaos, where the antic felines in residence -- "That doesn't include you dog ! Get lost" -- are presenting "a selection of feline extravaganzas to marvel over."

Update II:  Cats, dogs and all things bright and beautiful are welcome at Modulator's Friday Ark #106.

"Previous years' plumpest, most succulent dates were the Osama bin Laden and the Saddam Hussein"

The two faces of Lebanon: Gynophobe "Nasrallah [above left] is the talk of the town and hot date this year" as the Islamic holy month of Ramadan shifts into high gear and "date stalls in the Egyptian capital are packed with 'Nasrallahs' and 'Nasrallah rockets,' priced at about $2 a pound [while] previous years' plumpest, most succulent dates were the Osama bin Laden and the Saddam Hussein," reports the WaPo. Market forces will out. Meanwhile, another son of Lebanon, Detroit shining star Yousif Ghafari (above right) -- Chairman of the American powerhouse Ghafari, Inc. -- is putting his money where his mouth is (see below).

"The risk of action is a much better alternative to the risk of inaction," said Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers, one of a select group of corporate leaders tapped by President Bush "to lead a private-sector rebuilding effort in Lebanon similar to ones the White House launched last year in Pakistan and Central America," reports the Wall Street Journal (subscription only):

While earlier campaigns followed natural disasters, the Lebanon effort aims to help the country recover from Israel's bombing during the war with the Islamic militant group Hezbollah.

. . . in an interview after meeting with President Bush, [Chambers] dismissed the idea that postwar Lebanon might be a politically tricky place for a CEO to represent the U.S. government . . . describing Lebanon as "the linchpin to many other opportunities around the world" . . .

The four executives handling the Lebanon project chipped in $1 million of their own money to the new U.S.-Lebanon Partnership Fund, while Citibank and the federal Overseas Private Investment Corp. created a $120 million loan facility to offer financing for home repairs, small businesses and long-term mortgages.

One of the four executives is Yousif Ghafari, a Lebanese Christian who came to the United States in 1972:

For years Mr. Ghafari donated to the Republican Party, but this year [2004] he stepped up the pace, raising $350,000 to become a Ranger. He said that "the 9/11 situation was a bad situation for us" but that he supported Mr. Bush for "taking the initiative" to oust Saddam Hussein and believed that Mr. Bush had the capacity to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

"The Western-educated and business-motivated know that the whole Middle Eastern region has to change," said Mr. Ghafari, who collected donations from non-Arabs as well.

Nasrallah or Ghafari? Take your pick. Ghafari, who has served on several U.N. committees, floats our boat. This from his October 2004 "Statement on Human Rights":

We urge all governments in the region to fulfill the promise of the Doha Declaration for Democracy and Reform, which calls on all Arab countries to adopt modern, democratic constitutions, regularly hold free and fair elections, place limits on executive power, guarantee freedom of association and expression, permit the full participation of women in political life, and end extra-judicial procedures, emergency laws and torture.

However, in some countries in the Middle East region we continue to see no abatement in authorities’ use of torture; in the repression of free speech and of independent political and religious activity; no tempering of overreaching executive power, which works to the detriment of political and religious pluralism, civil society development, independent judiciaries and governmental accountability.  The need for concrete reform continues in Syria.  Iran’s already poor human rights record worsened when regime hardliners manipulated this year’s Majlis elections to ensure victory.  We have encouraged Libya to demonstrate the bold leadership it evidenced in eliminating its weapons of mass destruction and MTCR-class missile programs, by undertaking fundamental reforms in the areas of human rights and political freedom.  As President Bush stated last December, when welcoming Libya’s commitment to eliminate WMD, “should Libya pursue internal reform, America will be ready to help its people to build a more free and prosperous country.”

Hearts and minds come to mind.

"We were all laughing about it"

"We were all laughing about it," Clinton said about the investigation into Sandy Berger for taking classified terrorism documents from the National Archives back in July of 2004. "People who don't know him might find it hard to believe. But . . . all of us who've been in his office have always found him buried beneath papers."  What a lovable, bumbling guy, huh? Clinton aide Paul Begala's "Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kind of cool" comes to mind. These are not serious people, and they don't take us fellow Americans seriously. The rising tide of Islamist fascism swelled during their time at the helm, and now Bubba wants it to just all go away and let his "legacy" rise to the skies even as his successor gets mired in the post-9/11 quagmire that is his true legacy, but the blogosphere ain't gonna let it happen.

"If you ever put me in that position again, you're fired," said an apoplectic Bubba to his blindsided staff following a noxious "Fox News Sunday" interview with the faultlessly "fair and balanced" Chris Wallace Sunday that our fellow citizens of the left are now desperately attempting to spin in their fallen hero's favor. Like Chris, who was there, we aren't buyin':

Former President Clinton is a very big man. As he leaned forward -- wagging his finger in my face -- and then poking the notes I was holding -- I felt as if a mountain was coming down in front of me.

"I thought it was a fair, balanced and not especially inflammatory question," Wallace said yesterday in recounting his "Fox News Sunday" sit-down with Clinton. "I even said, 'I know hindsight is 20/20.' But he went off. And once he went off, there was no bringing him back. He wanted to talk about it in detail. He wanted to conjure up right-wingers and conservative hit jobs and a theory involving Rupert Murdoch that I still don't understand."

A mountain of something that comes steaming out of Cowes came to our own mind. The finger pointing echoed Slick Willy's "Bartlett's moment" back when he beseeched us unwashed to believe that he had never had sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. Bill Clinton said post impeachment that his affair with Monica Lewinsky was "a terrible moral error" but that he regarded his battle against the impeachment that followed as "a badge of honor."

He loves, and she loves, and they love . . .?

That Hillary and the left would stand by their man speaks for itself. Who could blame Chelsea, the future first female president of these United States? Our toes have been in permanent curl position from the moment Bill and Hill told Dan -- or whoever it was that conducted that unspeakable "60 Minutes" interview -- they'd made marital mistakes and were sorry. When they got their young daughter -- the three of them lying back on a hammock -- to say she was "glad they're my parents," we knew it was child abuse and never looked back.

Don't get too attached to anything

"Desire is the true source of economic value," wrote Virginia Postrel over two years back, long before she submitted herself to the surgeon's knife to give a kidney to a dear friend. "The production of wealth comes not simply from labor or raw materials or even intellectual brilliance. It comes from new ways to give people what they want. [Gak. Could she have imagined at the time that she would be giving another woman a kidney pulled out of her own breast?] By matching creativity and desire, the economy will renew itself." (Chrysler ME 412 Concept left and Pentax Optio 450 right)

Am I a camera? Even as our awesome blogfriend Boston University professor of medieval history Richard Landes testifies in a French court re "the impact of the pictures of al-Dura on the Arab world [that] were instantaneous, explosive, and enduring" and the mild-mannered Chris Wallace of Fox News tries Bubba's "soul," we and our sis speak of "cabbages -- and kings":

We: Can't remember whether I told you my cute little Pentax Optio 450 camera pulled its annual trick of not working.

She: No. What?

We: I was trying to take some awesome pix of Tiny in the wee hours going for the jugular of her superball collection when I realized the flash wasn't synchronizing with the shutter. Same thing happened about a year ago, when I sent the darned thing back to the manufacturer to have it "groomed" at no charge.

She: What will you do now?

We: Unfortunately, the Pentax firm isn't open on weekends, so I'll have to wait till Monday to call 'em. Then I'll send the little fellow back for them to fix once more.

She: Tedious.

We: I have my backup camera, which I found in a crowded drawer this morning after a few moments of panic. 

She: Things that don't work as expected wear one down. Marriage comes to mind.

"It's just like the blogosphere itself -- not to mention the real world out there," says we:

Don't get too attached to anything. Be agile and ever on the alert in the arms race for survival of the fittest. Now here's where we differ. Mummy was right in that she told us nobody said it was going to be fun or easy or whatever. The thing she didn't get, though . . . LOL re marriage . . . also COL (crying out loud) . . . But my point is that even as it wears you down, don't let it GET you down. The very impermanence of the blogosphere builds up one's resistance.

As we said in Laura Lee's comments, "We shall win."

"History is on America's side"

Gratuitous Cute Kitty Pic #1. Tiny keeps cool among the hostas.

"Iraq is naturally three nations. It became a unitary state under Sykes-Picot* as an imperial Anglo-French exercise," writes Wretchard at The Belmont Club, persuasively arguing for the historical logic of the Bush Doctrine:

America has given the Iraqis a chance to leave the Sykes-Picot framework in a constitutional and consensual manner. In a very fundamental sense, history is on America's side, and insurgency which aims at re-establishing some ethnic dominance are really fighting the tide of events. Concealed in the debate about Iraq is the little recognized detail that a Federal Iraq with a Shi'ite majority is inherently far stabler than a Sunni minority-dominated state under a strongman, which is what liberals, who ought to know better, seem to hanker for.

The *Sykes-Picot Agreement -- a secret understanding concluded in May 1916, during World War I -- explains TigerHawk, was "the archtypical colonialist deal,"

. . . in which France and the United Kingdom secretly agreed on the borders between their respective areas of direct control and influence in the Arab Middle East. The Palestinians have a long list of grievances that derive from that fateful deal, [not to mention the UN's never-implemented post-WWII partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states] as does Iraq, which was given the chance to erase its legacy by Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"The agreement is seen by many as a turning point in Western/Arab relations, as it negated the promises made to Arabs through T.E. Lawrence for a national homeland in the Syrian territory in exchange for their siding with British forces against the Ottoman Empire," according to Wikipedia. [No, but we saw the movie.] 

Gratuitous Cute Kitty Pic #2. Baby dominates the autumn landscape with Sedum spectabile blossoms behind and a bed of blue-grey leaves of Dianthus deltoides foreground.

On a roll, TigerHawk excerpts a Bernard Lewis lecture that "connects the historical tributaries of today's pathological political culture in that part of the world. If you do nothing else, read Professor Lewis' explanation for the region's attachment to European-style totalitarianism," advises TH:

The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or the Assad family in Syria or the more friendly dictatorship of Mubarak in Egypt -- all of these have no roots whatsoever in the Arab or in the Islamic past . . .

The French colonial empire was, for the most part, beyond the reach of the Nazis, which meant that the governors of the French colonies had a free choice: To stay with Vichy or to join Charles de Gaulle, who had set up a Free French Committee in London. The overwhelming majority chose Vichy . . . The governor and his high officials in the administration in Syria-Lebanon took their orders from Vichy, which in turn took orders from Berlin. The Nazis moved in, made a tremendous propaganda effort, and were even able to move from Syria eastwards into Iraq and for a while set up a pro-Nazi, fascist regime. It was in this period that political parties were formed that were the nucleus of what later became the Baath Party. The Western Allies eventually drove the Nazis out of the Middle East and suppressed these organizations. But the war ended in 1945, and the Allies left. A few years later the Soviets moved in, established an immensely powerful presence in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and various other countries, and introduced Soviet-style political practice.

Of course we're all only human, and the poisoning of the neighbor's well can work both ways. As Mark Steyn wrote last spring, "Twenty-seven years ago, because Islam didn’t fit into the old cold war template, analysts mostly discounted it":

In 1989, with the Warsaw Pact disintegrating before his eyes, poor beleaguered Mikhail Gorbachev received a helpful bit of advice from the cocky young upstart on the block: “I strongly urge that in breaking down the walls of Marxist fantasies you do not fall into the prison of the West and the Great Satan,” Ayatollah Khomeini wrote to Moscow. “I openly announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the greatest and most powerful base of the Islamic world, can easily help fill up the ideological vacuum of your system.”

Our analysis in our post "Ali Baba and all that" citing Steyn's article seems apt:

Those "thousands of mullahs dispatched" by the ayatollah to convert the citizens of the former Soviet Union gave us the willies and reminded us of "the Gramscian underpinnings of the Soviet Union's insidious infiltration of our own elite institutions last century, not to mention Ibn Warraq's assertion that in the aftermath of The war to end all wars, Islam was seen as a counterforce to the Communist threat. There's a reason the left and jihadis are finding themselves in bed together. Both subscribe to totalitarian, collectivist ideologies whose bottom line is "I know what's best for you. Sit down, shut up, and do as you're told. Or else."

As leading lights of the Religion of Peace™ have been advising Benedetto in so many words in the last period of time, "Stop calling us violent, or we'll kill you."

Update:  Dozens more cute animal pix at  Modulator's "105th Friday Ark."

"The enormous stupidity of their undertaking"

Time magazine gave their January 2, 193l "Man of the Year" Adolph Hitler a bloody crossout fourteen years later on May 7, 1945 (above left), when the cover story reported that "Adolf Hitler as a political force had been expunged," but we had to supply our own crossout for their latest fawning cover of the breathless MSM's dazzling bauble of the moment (above right). They preferred to portray Iranian President Ahmadinejad as a Christ-like figure à la El Greco (see below). 'Don't know who the illustrator is, but he or she did a masterful job of portraying this spawn of the heart of darkness as a persecuted victim. [Editor's note: While we stopped reading Time decades ago 'cause we couldn't stand the breezy style and blatant leftward tilt, the online operation nevertheless has the most aweseome archives.]

"EXCLUSIVE: Face to face with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man whose swagger is stirring fears of war with the US," subheads Time magazine's society-columnoid mano-a-mano interview of you-know-who by a clueless, all-about-me leftoid wonder called Scott MacLeod, who imagines himself an Oriana Fallaci for our times, asserting that "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn't one for ceremony." Huh?  Before we move on, two things. Ceremony is where human assertion of honor is at, and Ahmadinejad, who has his hand on the pulse of the idiotarianat, knows big time -- like Bill Clinton -- that it is all about ceremony. How sad that the Gramscian virus infiltrated and destroyed the national fabric while America slept.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Our Savior on the cover of Time magazine for September 25, 2006 (left) and perhaps the illustrator's inspiration, El Greco's "Via Crucis" -- the Way of the Cross -- (1587-97 Oil on canvas 105 x 67 cm Museu d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona).

"The notion of an unjust concentration of world power in the hands of Western democracies is an old Leftist conceit, and though Ahmadinejad is the president of a pointedly reactionary religious regime, he sounded very much like a 1970s Leftist -- including talk about 'imperialism' that was so old I could practically visualize the gas tank of a Ford Pinto blowing up while he was speaking," writes John Podhoretz, in a rousing NY Post review of Ahmadinejad's UN presentaton. By contrast, GW "emulated Ronald Reagan's enormously important and influential 1988 speech at Moscow State University, where the Gipper spoke plainly to the Russian people about democracy and freedom and how they work":

In this case, Bush tried to speak directly to the ordinary folk throughout the Middle East, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Syria and Iran (and also to those suffering through unimaginable horror in Darfur) about what America really believes, really wants and is really trying to do to help them and the world.

"Having had the experience of living under a communist system, I have learned to spare myself such torture," writes Luc in the comments at Dr. Sanity's latest post, where she comments on "the deeply despicable and nauseatingly hypocritical speech the lying President of Iran delivered at the UN last night." Like her, we tried to listen but had to turn it off:

It was so breathtakingly duplicitous, that I could barely listen to the translation . . . I would have sooner looked at a piece of vile pornography than continue to listen to him.

Only in a world that values nothing would there not be instantaneous outrage at the lies, deceptions and self-serving tripe offered for world consumption by a man who clearly has no conscience and enjoys lying and distorting for the fun of it. How could such a man be given the world stage to spew forth his lies, let alone be feted and honored for them?

Back to Dr. S's commmenter, Luc, who's been there and done that:

What I find more appalling it is the CLOWNS who listen to the speech and then try to comment intelligently on its contents, as if that was possible, and do not seem to realize the enormous stupidity of their undertaking.

I would find quoting the text of the speech and giving the reasons for no accompanying commentary whatsoever the proper way to deal with his speech at the UN.

Common sense is unfortunately all too uncommon.

The American Hiroshima?

We may have been a little ahead of the curve, but here's how we captioned this photo in the spring of 2004 in our apocalyptic post "1099 and all that": "Crusaders surrounded by Saladin's army, October 2, 1187 (Second Crusade), etching by Gustave Dore (left) and 'Little Boy' mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, August 6, 1945."

"The IDEAL date for the Mother of All Terrorist Acts would be October 2," we blogged two years back:

Saladin recaptured Jerusalem on October 2, 1187, after 88 years of Crusader rule. The name Salah ad Din means "Light of the Faith," "Righteousness of the Faith" or "Weapon of the Faith," and through the ages Saladin has been an inspiration for Muslims in many respects.

Now comes Graham Allison in "The ongoing failure of imagination" at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [via Milt's File], citing the final report of the 9/11 Commission and admonishing us that "the major conclusion of [the Commission] deserves repetition. The principal failure to act to prevent the September 11 attack was a 'failure of imagination'":

A similar failure of imagination leads many today to discount the risk of a nuclear 9/11 . . .

The negative economic repercussions would reverberate well beyond the developed world. As U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned, "Were a nuclear terrorist attack to occur, it would cause not only widespread death and destruction, but would stagger the world economy and thrust tens of millions of people into dire poverty."

How does one assess the probability of an unprecedented event that could have catastrophic consequences? Since there is no established methodology, the soundest way to proceed is to ask and answer the core questions: who, what, where, when, and how?

We'll take a quick look at the answer to the first of Allison's questions -- "Who could be planning a nuclear terrorist attack?" -- and then urge you to read the whole thing and move on [gak, that phrase] to "1099 and all that":

Al Qaeda remains a formidable enemy with clear nuclear ambitions. In 1998, Osama bin Laden declared that he considered obtaining weapons of mass destruction "a religious duty." According to the final report of the 9/11 Commission, "Al Qaeda has tried to acquire or make nuclear weapons for at least 10 years . . . and continues to pursue its strategic goal of obtaining a nuclear capability."

"Just because Osama is paranoid doesn't mean the infidel isn't out to get him," we captioned our Photoshopped image of the bearded wonder (above) two years back, when we predicted October 2 as the date for the next mega attack on our shores from the followers of the Religion of Peace.™

Now on to the conspiracy theory du jour [via Beth of My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy]:

Urgent news from Abu Dawood, the newly appointed commander of the al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan:

* Final preparations have been made for the American Hiroshima, a major attack on the U. S.

* Muslims living in the United States should leave the country without further warning.

* The attack will be commandeered by Adnan el Shukrijumah (“Jaffer Tayyer” or “Jafer the Pilot”), a naturalized American citizen, who was raised in Brooklyn and educated in southern Florida.

And from Gateway Pundit:

From Pakistan comes news that Adnan G. El Shukrijumah has successfully smuggled nuclear material across the US and is planning an attack on the United States during the holy month of Ramadan which begins on September 24th.

"Mir also said that bin Laden has assigned a man named Adnan Al-Shukri Juma (above photo) to carry out a new attack within the US which is intended to be larger than the 11 September, 2001 attacks," according to adnkronosinternational [via clarity & resolve, via My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy]. "According to Mir, Adnan Jumaa has smuggled explosives and nuclear materials into the US through the Mexican border over the last two years and is hiding somewhere in America where the FBI has not been able to locate him."

There's even a Chelsea connection:

Boston Street Gang M-13 Cited as "true terror threat" linked to Al Qaeda & Adnan Shukrijumah -- Street gangs helping to smuggle terrorists from Mexico into the US . . .

One of the two men, Elmer "Tiger" Tejada, 24, who had been deported after being convicted of a slew of crimes, including attempted murder charges for hurling a machete at Chelsea cops, was busted in Lynn on New Year's Day. Tejada is described as "an original MS-13 member" from East Boston, sources said.

Proxy wars, anyone?

The truth will out

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side," goes the rousing anthem penned by one of our own local boys, James R. Lowell, published in the Boston Courier December 11, 1845 "as a poem protesting America’s war with Mexico." Take your pick: ROP  demonstrators like "Rage Boy " in Kashmir (AP photo) left, or the man Fallaci loved, Papa Ratzi (AFP photo).

"It's good to have come to something approaching the end of this saga, whose lessons are worth remembering." writes Cyrus Nowrasteh, screenwriter of the famously defamed TV miniseries "Path to 9/11," in his thoughtful Opinion Journal piece "The Path to Hysteria," subtitled "My sin was to write a screenplay accurately depicting Bill Clinton's record on terrorism":

The hysteria engendered by the series found more than one target. In addition to the death threats and hate mail directed at me, and my grotesque portrayal as a maddened right-winger, there developed an impassioned search for incriminating evidence on everyone else connected to the film . . . In the era of McCarthyism, the merest hint of a connection to communism sufficed to inspire dark accusations, the certainty that the accused was part of a malign conspiracy. Today, apparently, you can get something of that effect by charging a connection with a Christian mission . . .

It gave us, for one thing, a heartening glimpse (these things don't come along every day) of corporate backbone in the face of phenomenal pressure -- and an infinitely more chilling one testifying to the power and reach of politically driven hysteria. A ripe subject for a miniseries, if ever there was one.

Change "corporate" backbone to "papal" backbone and "politically driven" hysteria to "religionistically driven" hysteria, and the same can be said about Papa Razi's polite but firm refusal yesterday to bow down in dhimmitude before the howling heresimachs of the Religion of Peace™:

At this time, I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.

These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought . . .

I hope that this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect.

ScrappleFace, with only slight exaggeration, goes for the jugular:

A day after violent Muslim riots spurred Pope Benedict XVI to apologize for implying that Islam has brought more evil to the world, the Pontiff today agreed to consider a petition to add the name of Islam’s founder to the pantheon of Roman Catholic saints. Vatican researchers said the application is already being processed and they need only find one more verifiable after-death miracle attributed to Muhammad . . .

“We already have ample evidence that the long-dead prophet miraculously caused a major religious leader, with a reputation for infallibility, to apologize for telling the truth.”

Whether it's the Keepers of the Clinton "Legacy" trying to repress free speech by pressuring a network to cancel a miniseries here at home or the ululating phantasists of the Ummah calling for Benedetto's head over there, as we blogged awhile back:

The totalitarian impulse runs deep and dark in our species. The dustbin of history is filled with fiery-eyed idealists who saw the one true way and, rationalizing that ends justify the means, took it upon themselves to give thumbs up or down to mere mortals like ourselves.

Just ask George Soros, the hedge-fund billionaire "dedicated to transforming our constitutional republic into a socialist hive," according Richard Poe, co-author with David Horowitz of The Shadow Party, who tells Jamie Glazov in a FrontPage interview [via Atlas Shrugs via Maggie's Farm]:

The Shadow Party operates through deception.  It uses the Democratic Party as camouflage. By posing as ordinary Democrats, Shadow Party candidates trick mainstream voters into supporting them.  Their true agenda remains concealed.  As Soros writes in The Age of Fallibility, “[T]he Democratic Party does not stand for the policies that I advocate; indeed, if it did, it could not be elected.”

When you know what's best for the rest of us, truth need not apply.

Update: Pajamas Media links.