Don’t call him Shirley: A moment of silence for the incomparable Leslie Nielsen.
Oh, we can stop the investigation now: Islamist Prime Minister Erdogan says that Hezbollah had nothing to do with Rafik Hariri’s death. Everybody go home, nothing to see here. Wow, what an epic fail on the Obama administration’s outreach to Turkey. The EU, too. Could it get any worse? Sure. The private diplomatic cables and messages could be released to the world so that everyone knows what is the inside thinking of the administration.
Repeat after me: Barry Rubin is the best Middle East analyst in the world. Hey, here’s a great big toldja so from a guy who doesn’t use those words (but I will). (He does the Far East, too. Plus, he’s a very entertaining dinner companion.)
We hope it’s true: Wikileaks documents say Ayatollah Khameini has cancer. Here’s hoping. That would be one less Jew-hating tyrant in the world. Plus, a war for succession in Iran is nothing but good for the rest of the world, at least until it’s over. Then we have to see who won.
Speaking of Wikileaks: Here’s a synopsis of the ones about Israel. No big deal.
Another mysterious Iranian scientist death: Hm. If it’s Mossad, the Mossad is deep inside Iran. Although color me a bit skeptical:
According to the report, the assassination took place at 7:45 am when two men mounted on motorcycles attached a bomb to Dr. Majid Shahriari’s vehicle; he was killed instantly by the blast, and his wife was injured.
I’m thinking it’s not so easy to attach a bomb to a moving vehicle. In any case, the dead man was pretty high up in the Iranian enrichment program. Another setback for Iranian nukes.
The link you gave for the great Leslie Neilsen completely forgot about Men With Brooms! A funny curling movie! That should be award-worthy by itself!
Julian Assange is committing espionage against the USA. He is getting his information from agents in the Federal government, but he is acting as what is called a principal agent. The US could request extradition of him to meet charges of espionage, or the US could use more robust methods such as the KGB used to use (and the present Russian service seems to be reverting to).
The astonishing thing here is the access that Assange’s agents have. How did a pfc get such access? What has happened to “need to know?” The carelessness of email use by government officials and the military is also alarming.
It would also be interesting to find out if Assange has any backers, or if he is doing this by himself. How did he recruit his agents? Did he promise them rewards, or are they doing this out of grudges or sheer hatred of the USA? I gather the pfc who sent him the Iraq Campaign material had a grudge. Is this true of the others (there has to be at least one more who had access to diplomatic emails)?
These emails are likely to be useful to countries like China and Russia and Iran for breaking US ciphers. If these emails were enciphered when sent, other countries that have recordings of the enciphered emails now have plaintext copies to compare with the enciphered ones. This will help them crack the keys to our ciphers. In wartime this is deadly.
7:45 am? Forget it. No self-respecting Mossad agent will wake up in time for offing somebody at 7:45 AM.
Everyone knows that Mossad acts at night, so Mossad people sleep during the day…