It's nice to see anti-Semitism alive and well at the Guardian. Then again, at least it's nice to see a major media source wear its bias on its sleeve, rather than pretend it's purely neutral. Will Hutton decides to rebuke Israel for its recent incursions into Gaza, which netted eight cabinet members, thirty members of parliament, and thirty other officials of the Hamas-led Palestinian government, calling these acts, as well as the bombings of infrastructure targets in Gaza, a declaration of war by the Israeli state. Memo to Mr. Hutton: Well, duh. Hutton notes "Missiles from Gaza are regularly fired at Israel." Yet in Hutton's world, this apparently does not constitute an act of war against Israel by the Palestinian state, despite his earlier statement, "The Hamas government has not yet renounced its commitment to the elimination of Israel or to the use of terrorism." The "elimination of Israel" as a tenant of what Hutton claims is a legitimate and sovereign government is not a "declaration of war"? I'm not sure how much clearer Hamas, and thus, the Palestinian people, who put Hamas in power, have to be in their declaration of war against Israel to satisfy Mr. Hutton. Far from being, as Hutton claims, an inexcusable act of war, Israel's bombings of and raids in to Gaza are more of what Israel needs to be doing to stand strong in the face of an enemy which seeks its utter annihilation. There may be a sliver of hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, if Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas were not being undermined by the Hamas majority in the government. But when a majority of a nation seeks not only the defeat of its neighbor, but the elimination of that nation's people, there is little reasoning that can be done with such persons to secure peace. Israel must project strength to protect itself, to assure the Palestinians and any other group or nation that it is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure "Never again." Writers such as Mr. Hutton would do well to pack away their double standards for the Israeli state and, well, "remain silent" would be the polite term.

Oh, by the way, there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A lesser man might say something like, "Suck it, mouth-foamers", but I'll refrain from engaging in such childish behavior.

Stephan Rider:

Please note: You're not allowed to call yourselves followers of a "religion of peace" if you riot and make death threats over a political cartoon.

[...]

A lot of people decry such statements, saying that this is the actions of some muslims, but not most of them. I'm still waiting for the major leaders of Islam to rise up and denounce such violence. Until that starts happening on a regular basis, I have a hard time believing those arguments. [Via Jeff.]

A Patriot Post reader:

In their eagerness to inflict as much damage as possible to the Bush administration record, the Democrats once again are being reckless with the truth and with national security. Some say that the president is spying on American citizens. The president has made clear from the start that the wiretaps were limited to targeting communications from outside the country to individuals in the U.S. with known links to terrorist groups. It's not an "unreasonable search" to look for the bad guys when fighting international terrorism. The Democrats don't have a leg to stand on in this issue...and they know it.

How can the Democrats in all honesty criticize the president for intelligence failures and then attack him for being too aggressive in doing surveillance? How do you explain dismantling protections in the midst of a terror war? The Democrats by their duplicity are playing a very dangerous game that could derail the president's strategy to defeat a deadly enemy. The Fourth Amendment to the constitution protects its citizens from "unreasonable searches and seizures" but who will protect us from "unreasonable" self-serving, seditious and self-destructive politicians?" --Fredericktown, Ohio

Paul Greenberg:

Dana Priest of The Washington Post sounds shocked - shocked! - to discover that George W. Bush ordered a complete remobilization and reinvigoration of the CIA immediately after September 11th:

The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al-Qaida has grown into the largest CIA covert-action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over clandestine tactics...

This is news? Isn't this just what W. told the country he would do in the aftermath of September 11th?

[...]

Apparently W. meant it. According to the Post's Ms. Priest, the president signed an order six days after September 11th empowering American intelligence agencies in a way not seen since the Second World War.

Gosh, just as if we had suffered a surprise attack and thousands of our people had been killed in a second Pearl Harbor.

Do you think maybe the president decided to fight this like a world war because, far ahead of his critics, he realized we were in one?

John Fund:

[T]he establishment media clearly leans toward the view that the NSA leak was in the public interest. Unlike the Plame probe, the Justice Department career employees trying to investigate the NSA case can expect no laudatory editorials urging them to pursue their job relentlessly and, above all, no media bloodhounds conducting their own parallel investigations.

The old adage that politics should stop at the water's edge was abandoned long ago. Now the idea that all of us, regardless of political stripe, have a stake in preventing harm to national security from unauthorized intelligence leaks seems to have similarly entered the dustbin of history.

John Hawkins:

The last major war the United States was involved in was Vietnam. The modern Democratic Party leadership all came of age during that war, as did most of the editorial staff in the manistream media. It wasn’t just a defining moment in the modern American left, it was the defining moment, the prism through which the left would view the world from that moment on. Vietnam was justification for every pacifist tendency that every liberal has ever had. When they said that war didn’t solve anything, they could point to Vietnam. When they wanted to show the consequences of war, they could point to Vietnam. When they wanted to show the failure of military force as a tool for political change, they could point to Vietnam. It was the last major war this country was ever involved in. Sure we’ve had military operations, from Grenada to the Gulf War to the Balkans, but Vietnam our last big one, and it was a war we ended up losing. Vietnam has been their de facto answer for everything for the past 30 years.

Iraq threatens their entire belief system. [Emphasis added. --R]

Jeff takes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's ("Intelligencer"? Granted, I know it's a real word, but come one. Couldn't you have just said "Reporter"?) Thomas Shapley--hereafter referred to as "Tom"--to task for the latter's confusing of the Valerie Plame non-event and the recent leak on NSA surveillance:

How peculiar indeed that the President and his administration should respond differently to these two situations. How very odd that when something right out of the pages of a movie of the week crops up and administration opponents do their level best to capitalize on it in order to harm the President and obstruct his second-term agenda, that the administration should respond one way, but when a loose-lipped grudge-bearer calls up a reporter and blows the lid on an operation that saves American lives, the administration does something else entirely.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say the White House is doing its job, Tom.