You're onto something. People are always looking for scapegoats after a war is lost, usually for their own aggrandizement, and Hitler used the stabbed in the back charge very skillfully in order to gain power.

Hitler's charges were exaggerated, and in large part blamed the wrong people, but there was more than a germ of truth to them. The excessively harsh treatment rendered the Germans by the victors was another potent selling point. Both made his demagoguery very receptive to most Germans.

World War II could have ended much sooner, by allowing Germany and Japan to sue for peace once they realized the war was lost. There were many in each country scheming for such an end and making contact with the Allies.

But the Allied leaders rebuffed those attempts and insisted on unconditional surrender. And with good reason. They didn't want a repetition of World War I, entering into an armistice until some other demagogue convinced the people that they could have won the war if only they had persevered more or hadn't been stabbed in the back by traitors. They wanted the Germans and Japanese to understand fully they had been beaten.

Karl Giberson says:

As a matter of fact, the suggestion that nothing can naturally fluctuate into everything sounds a lot like a faith statement on a par with belief in God.

How true. I've long been bemused by the arguments of the Creationists arguing for an Intelligent Designer and the Evolutionists, each trying to use science to do what science is unable to do: prove or disprove the existence of a God, or Gods. At bottom each side is, like the subject of this article PZ Myers, relying on fundamentalist faith to make their arguments.

I don't know which side is right, but instinctively feel there must be more than science to explain our existence. Even if everything the scientists say is true, from the Big Bang theory whence everything sprang from the explosion of an immensely dense particle into the infinite but still expanding cosmos, from whence came that particle? And if all life, including humans, involved from a simple microorganism, from whence came that microorganism? But I don't know that a supernatural explanation exists.

But believing in the possibility, the probability, or even the certainty of a supernatural explanation is a long way from determining which of the thousands of religions, many with diagrammatically opposite beliefs, is true. Is it a Christian God? The Roman, Russian Orthodox Greek Orthodox or other versions? Or one of the many Protestant sects and subsect? Is it the Jehovah of my wife's Jehovah's Witnesses? Is He the Muslim Allah? If so, Sunni, Shiah or one of the many subsects within each. Is He Jewish? Or is He, She, It or Them a pagan God or Gods?

Are the God or Gods interested in their Creation? Does He, She, It or They care if we go to church regularly, and whether we sin or not?

If science cannot prove the existence of a God or Gods, it can certainly not prove which religion is correct. But you don't need a scientific education to know that they cannot all be correct.

Yet most, not all, religions believe with absolute certainty that they are the one true religion, often to the point that only their members in good standing can hope to reach salvation after death. It is a short leap from there to believing that heretics are something less than full human beings, worthy of killing if they refuse to come around. And if such killing also creates a material advantage for the killer, no matter.

As Steven Weinberg put it: "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

To repeat, I don't really know whether a supernatural being exists or existed. I make no judgment on those who believe or do not believe in such, other than that they should cease holding judgments of those who don't believe, or who believe in a different God.

Non-believers like PZ Myers should also cease denigrating believers; they convince no one, and reinforce the fundamentalism of both believers and non-believers.

Did Cole leave out the real reason for Bush's apparent flip-flop on Iran?

Most of the huge oil price increases have been the result of speculation in the oil futures market. And that speculation has been fueled by concern over the disruption of world oil supplies from the Persian Gulf, which must travel through the easily blockaded Strait of Hormuz. And just one tanker being sunk could raise insurance rates prohibitively high for tankers to even try passage.

Is it just coincidence that the oil futures began rising along with the war drums against Iran started beating seriously? And that the price per barrel, along with prices at the pump, have begun to come down right after Bush's attitude toward Iran began to moderate? I think not.

A side benefit would be helping McCain in the election, although it seems poor timing for his ads blaming Obama for the rising gasoline prices (along with everything else).

Another offshoot could be cronies of Bush and Shady let in the revving up and down of the war drums, so they could make a fortune buying oil futures and selling them at just the right moment. But woudl they be that cynical? Silly question.

Of course there may be another good reason for the books' success -- namely, a push from right-wing media. Sean Hannity has already had Corsi, Freddoso and Morris on his show on Fox News to discuss their work.

There's another even more important reason: the right wing buys those books in bulk and hands them out. How do you think Ann Coulter keeps making the best-seller lists?

And, of course, being on the best-seller lists influences other people to actually buy them.