Of course Glenn know this but other commenters should keep in mind that TM here is just bringing back an old neocom standby from the Bush years (and before). If there is a prospect that the official US policy might become even slightly critical of Israel, raise the flag of quietism immediately. Hey, the Israelis have their 100-1 kill ratio down pat without even admitting let alone using their nuclear arsenal, so let them and the Palestinians work it out without US interference. Don't mention US aid at all, just talk about political pressure.

Joe Klein is different, but he's not America's foremost Middle East expert.

Well, I could always change my religion to Judaism..

You mean you're not Jewish? That's funny. You look so Jewish!

Speaking generally, the really essential element in a religion as such consists in the conviction it gives that our existence proper is not limited to our life, but is infinite. Now this wretched religion of the Jews does not do this at all, in fact it does not even attempt it. It is, therefore, the crudest and poorest of all religions and consists merely in an absurd and revolting theism. [] While all other religions endeavor to explain to the people by symbols and parables the metaphysical significance of life, the religion of the Jews is entirely immanent and furnishes nothing but a mere war-cry in the struggle with other nations.

--Arthur Püpenschauer (or something like that)

Famous German philosopher, 1788-1860

From Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 1, p.126n (Oxford U.P.)

We're watching you, Püpenschauer. Just wait until your theories are carried forward and distorted by some kind of Friedrich Ichnzsche! Could definitely lead to bad things.

You're a lot more fun than Steele the First African-American RNC Chairman was. That's progress. Now I don't know if you're pooping in the shower, or you're pooping in such a manner that you feel you have to take a shower afterward, but I have some advice: you need to learn to squeeze a little more Charmin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_EmXRYaiYY

This should take care of your problem. But a word of caution. Don't get carried away with this new-found approach. You don't want to wipe Israel off the map!

These policies may seem like reactions to the "changed world" confronting America after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But in fact, each one of them – and many other policies now being advanced by the Bush Administration – was planned long before the first plane ever struck the doomed Twin Towers.

They are the handiwork of an obscure but influential conservative group called Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose members – including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – now sit in the highest reaches of power. The papers they produced during the 1990s are like a roadmap of the course that America is following – a course which PNAC hopes will lead to a "benign" but utterly dominant "American Empire."

The Unipolar Moment

Not surprisingly, the roots of PNAC go back to the first Bush Administration. In 1992, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney asked two of his top aides, Paul Wolfowitz (now assistant secretary of Defense) and Lewis Libby (now Cheney's chief of staff), to draw up a "Defense Guidance Plan" to shape American strategy in the post-Cold War world. They produced an aggressive, ambitious document calling for the unilateral use of American military might to "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." Military intervention would be "a constant fixture" of what Wolfowitz and Libby called a "new order" which the United States – not the United Nations – would "establish and protect."

The goal was to seize the opportunity offered by the collapse of the Soviet Union – which left the United States without a serious international rival – and extend this "unipolar moment" of American dominance for decades to come; indeed, into a "New American Century."

--Chris Floyd

http://empireburlesquenow.blogspot.com/2005/03/dark-passage-pnacs-blueprint-for.html

but too many freaks are being brought in by links to this post to read all the rest so maybe this point has been made but I don't believe the Europeans care all that much about Bagram or even the whole "Af-Pak" situation as much as they care about the old cold war and the prospect for its reemergence. They're happy that Obama won rather than the guy whose staff was in Georgia (with the Israeli connections) encouraging provoking the Russians. Above all, they're happy about Obama negotiating away the missile shield with the totally phony supposed Iranian connection. They don't want a new cold war. They don't want new Russian missiles pointed their way. That's (admittedly not all that much) the achievement - the rest is just encouragement.

GG come right out? Impossible!

"They and Israel don't get along - what else more is needed?"

-- GlennGreenwald

That fact that it is even possible for you to repeat this utter slander not only enables WinSmith to become slathered in Calamine but proves Saint JITA's wise proverb that teh Israel Lobby has crumbled like a house of f'n cards! You owe everyone an apology. War on Gaza, indeed!

Oppie did realize the playing God part of the atomic project and "Trinity" was part of that, but I believe you're making a good point.

Of course. Not disputing your point, just adding a little backstory.

Trinity - code name for first nuclear test so named by prominent Jewbu, J.R. Oppenheimer, inspired by a John Donne poem.