For change of venue. HT: JOM

TIME notes some potential problems with the prosecution of KSM:

“The challenge for prosecutors is to try and present a case that is not tainted by evidence that is inadmissible,” says Joshua Dratel, a criminal lawyer in New York who has appealed cases against terrorists on the basis of torture allegations. Holder testified at his Senate-confirmation hearings earlier this year that he believes waterboarding is torture, and any evidence obtained after Mohammed’s waterboarding will likely be inadmissible.

That means the government will likely have to rely on evidence that predates the 2003 waterboarding, as well as Mohammed’s 2002 statement to al-Jazeera in which he took credit for the attack. Holder said at his press conference announcing the trials Friday that he has seen evidence previously unavailable that made him confident the prosecution will be successful…

But even if the government can make a strong case without the tainted evidence, Mohammed’s treatment could cause problems. It’s possible — though not likely — that a court could rule that the government doesn’t have the right to prosecute someone who has been severely abused in custody. (Previously, suspects have been released even when their abuse didn’t prejudice evidence against them, but there’s no clear precedent for terrorism cases.)

Other issues likely to be raised by the defense, says Dratel, are finding a jury that can be considered impartial, especially blocks from the World Trade Center site, and whether Mohammed’s rights to a speedy trial have been violated.

We agree with those who say bringing KSM to trial in NYC is a dangerous and deeply weird decision. Surely it is an invitation for every Hasan wannabe to try his luck. In so many ways, this looks like a decision that will likely be bad for Democrats. As the man said, it really is impossible to caricature this administration. HT: JOM

Five years ago, Jonathan Chait said this in TNR:

I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history. And, while I’m tempted to leave it at that, the truth is that I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility (disguised behind transparently false modesty) at having done so. His favorite answer to the question of nepotism — “I inherited half my father’s friends and all his enemies” — conveys the laughable implication that his birth bestowed more disadvantage than advantage.

He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school — the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it. I hate the way he walks — shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks — blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. I hate his lame nickname-bestowing — a way to establish one’s social superiority beneath a veneer of chumminess…

I have friends who have a viscerally hostile reaction to the sound of his voice or describe his existence as a constant oppressive force in their daily psyche. Nor is this phenomenon limited to my personal experience: Pollster Geoff Garin, speaking to The New York Times, called Bush hatred “as strong as anything I’ve experienced in 25 years now of polling”…

Bush is a far more radical president than Clinton was…Bush crusaded for an enormous supply-side tax cut that was anathema to liberals. But, where Reagan followed his cuts with subsequent measures to reduce revenue loss and restore some progressivity to the tax code, Bush proceeded to execute two additional regressive tax cuts. Combined with his stated desire to eliminate virtually all taxes on capital income and to privatize Medicare and Social Security, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Bush would like to roll back the federal government to something resembling its pre-New Deal state…

Bush’s foreign policy…the way Bush sold it — by playing upon the public’s erroneous belief that Saddam had some role in the September 11 attacks — hearkened back to the deceit that preceded the Spanish-American War. Bush’s doctrine of preemption, which reserved the right to invade just about any nation we desired, was far broader than anything he needed to validate invading a country that had flouted its truce agreements for more than a decade…

Bush has governed as the most partisan president in modern U.S. history. The pillars of his compassionate-conservative agenda — the faith-based initiative, charitable tax credits, additional spending on education — have been abandoned or absurdly underfunded. Instead, Bush’s legislative strategy has revolved around wringing out narrow, party-line votes for conservative priorities by applying relentless pressure to GOP moderates…

The other day, Mark Hyman said this in the American Spectator:

Barack Obama despises America. When people who voted for Obama in 2008 — including registered Democrats — start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it “in for America,” then it’s clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion…Consider these facts.

The 30-years of Obama’s post-adolescent life are radical by any measure. First, he grew up listening to the ramblings of committed Communist Frank Marshall Davis. It had such a profound effect on him that he wrote fondly of Davis in his first book. In fact, that book is replete with statement after statement about how the U.S. is deeply flawed. Most Americans believe in American exceptionalism. Not so with Obama.

Patriotic Americans would not have listened to the bigoted, anti-Semitic, hate-America rants of a fringe religious leader for 20 seconds let alone for 20 years. Yet, Obama who admitted he attended services at Trinity United Church at least twice a month for two decades called Jeremiah Wright his mentor and his moral sounding board. Nor would most Americans cultivate a close friendship with an admitted domestic terrorist…

In his speech before the Muslim world, Obama made the patently absurd claim of equivalency between the status of displaced Palestinians and the slaughter of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. His claim that 7 million Muslims live in the U.S. is a figure inflated by as much as 700%…Obama claimed that the U.S. is not a Christian nation, which is at odds with the fact that 79% of Americans self-identify as Christians…

the door to greater individual freedoms in Iran was firmly closed shut when Obama announced the U.S would not meddle in Iran’s election and he offered no encouragement to democracy activists who protested the obviously stolen elections. His silence was deafening when regime security agents savagely attacked and killed countless Iranians who took to the streets…

Obama’s disagreement with American values and institutions is evident in domestic issues. He has stocked his administration with wild-eyed radicals who believe foreign law trumps the U.S. Constitution (Harold Koh); include an avowed Marxist and “truther” who believes George Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attack and is also an ardent supporter of cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal (Van Jones); and include a devoted admirer of Mao Tse-tung who slaughtered as many as 75 million people (Anita Dunn). (In contrast, George W. Bush’s Attorney-General nominee John Ashcroft was savaged by the news media for being an Evangelical Christian.) Three weeks after America’s first black president was sworn in, the nation’s first black Attorney-General who was hand-picked by Obama, called America “a nation of cowards”…

In May, Obama immediately issued a statement that he was “shocked and outraged by the murder” of a Kansas doctor specializing in partial-birth abortions. He called it a “heinous act of violence.” Attorney-General Holder mobilized U.S. Marshals nationwide to provide protection to abortion clinics. But Obama remained silent the very next day when two U.S. soldiers were gunned down by a Muslim extremist outside a Little Rock recruiting station…

Five months later, another Muslim fanatic gunned down nearly four dozen Americans, killing 13, at the Ft. Hood army base. It was an act that demanded the most serious demeanor of the military’s Commander-in-Chief. Yet, Obama referenced the massacre in the most insincere fashion just seconds after a jocular shout-out to an audience member during a public speaking engagement.

We live in a profoundly divided country today. It seems to us unlikely that the republic can long endure this state. What would it take, if anything, to unite the country again? If the country does come together, will it be under the Left, the Right, or something else?

The AP reported that the sniper John Allen Muhammad took “to the grave answers about why and how he plotted the killings of 10 people”, which apparently continues to be a puzzle:

Muhammad was executed for killing Dean Harold Meyers, who was shot in the head at a Manassas gas station during the spree across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. He never testified or explained why he masterminded the shootings with the help of a teenage accomplice. That left questions unanswered

Hmm. Perhaps the AP should look at some of the drawings associated with the snipers. Or perhaps pay a little attention to the gentleman’s eerie confrontation at the New Jersey DMV at 8:52 a.m. on the day before the anniversary of 9-11. (On the other hand, maybe it was America’s love of guns that was the root cause.)

Marty Peretz in TNR:

Can you imagine the fall of the ayatollahs? I can, and so can learned Abbas Milani, professor of Iranian studies at Stanford, whose writings you can read here, with an additional important article in both the print and on-line New Republic next week.

But can President Obama imagine an Iran freed from the iron grip of the mullahs’ madness? There is nothing in his behavior to suggest that he can or, for that matter, that he would be pleased if he could. His first visit to a Muslim country was for two days in Turkey in April. He and his aides, reported Tom Raum in the Huffington Post, were ecstatic about the results. As far as I can tell, there were none, at least none that were good. Turkey has continued its drift towards an Islamic foreign and domestic policy. The Organization of the Islamic Conference is already meeting in Istanbul, and Dr. A’jad will arrive there on Sunday. Believe me, he will be royally welcomed … and raise tremors among the declining moderate populace.

As with the meanings he conveyed to the Turks, Obama is to be judged with reference to the Iranians on what messages he has sent them. To the people in the streets, to the middle class and to the students–the only hope for Iran–he has shown them, frankly, his behind. Not a statement of solidarity. Certainly not material support. He is still apologizing for the overthrow by the C.I.A. of Iran’s prime minister, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, in 1953. That was 56 years ago, for God’s sake.

Peretz also talked about Russia and Obama a little while ago. He seems quite worried about the performance and mental make-up of this President of ours.

AP:

The U.S. Homeland Security secretary says she is working to prevent a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment after the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas. Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday’s rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The shootings left 13 people dead and 29 wounded.

Whatever.

An analyst’s analysis of Hasan; it’s a little better than the media’s excuse of PTSD. (The media have been even more dreadful than usual in covering Hasan and his obvious motive, by the way):

Where once the usual description for the source of tormenting thoughts might have been demons, imps, djinns, or the devil, the modern patient uses quasi-rational technology. In 1919 the machines contained cranks and levers, running on electricity. In 2009, the “persecutors” take the form of available technology. Thus, the modern day psychotic may believe that secret rays are being directed at his brain, or tiny computer chips have been implanted in him to cause him to have terrible thoughts and impulses. Whether the persecutor is internalized or remains externalized the salient point is that the cultural surround supplies the elements around which the psychosis coalesces.

How does this relate to our “lone, deranged” attacker? Current versions of fundamentalist Islam, which depend on externalizing all the faults of the Ummah, which project all the negative attributes of the Ummah, and which not only support but idealize those who act on such paranoid constructs, directs and reinforces the very projective, externalizing tendencies of the paranoid which lead to aggression…

Paranoid patients have an internal persecutor, an ambivalently held parental object representation, which is projected onto the external world. This is often enough to supply the paranoid with his delusional persecutors and remove responsibility for his actions and failures. Now it is the externalized, projected enemy who contains the unacceptable/disowned thoughts and impulses of the paranoid. When the disease progresses, the object/persecutor can be re-internalized or (re)introjected, at which point it often takes the form of an influencing machine.

So the paranoid person has an imaginary persecutor that he projects onto the external world. Gee, is this anything like being in the White House and claiming that you “speak truth to power“?

This is a statement by President Obama on Iran:

I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power.

We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community. We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran’s request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people. We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.

Meanwhile, Iran has stepped up uranium production, Israel seized weapons from Iran bound for Hezbollah, and protesters in Tehran apparently chanted “Obama, Obama are you with us or the regime.” This is a wacky time in America, but also a very sad and dangerous one.

We do not have the time to be clever today (or at least make the attempt), but it is remarkable the willful pace of self-destruction that the American government appears to have pursued so aggressively over the course of 2009. From the unserious treatment of those who want to kill us, to the abandonment of allies and the embracing of our adversaries, from ruinous and fatuous tax plans, through a nutty decision to outsource senior management of large companies to foreign countries with non-punitive tax regimes, so much of America has been set on a path towards something poorer and less safe — to put it mildly. And the media can’t be bothered to notice. (HT: Powerline)

Reuel Marc Gerecht makes a case that Afghanistan is important when considered in a certain context — that defeating the Taliban is key to stopping Al Qaeda:

Sophisticated critics of sending more US troops to fight the Taliban argue that the group is not as central a threat to American national security as Al Qaeda. Yet, for Al Qaeda operationally, there is nothing more important now than the Taliban wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. To start with, the critics are undoubtedly correct in underscoring Afghanistan’s near-irrelevance…

Unless Al Qaeda is able to reignite Sunni-Shiite strife in Iraq –- and the odds of this happening seem pretty small –- Sunni jihadism has lost the Iraq war, and with it, cross your fingers, the Arabs. Mesopotamia really was the central front in the war on terror because it was the only military theater Al Qaeda and its allies had in the Arab world. Drive out the Americans, unleash a Sunni-Shiite bloodbath that just might bring Sunni Arab states and Iran into a bloody cold –- ideally hot -– war, and Sunni Islamic militancy might just shake the region.

Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, both decent strategists, knew what they were saying when they described Iraq as the decisive battleground. Victory there would have given their cause real possibilities in the Muslim heartlands.

The neo-Taliban in Afghanistan, like the Pakistani Taliban, are the children of Al Qaeda. Only in Afghanistan and Pakistan have we seen jihadism actually take root in large numbers. No place else in the Muslim world was laid waste like Afghanistan. The Taliban represent a remarkably redoubtable militant Islamist movement capable of grafting onto a vibrant ethnic identity (Pashtunism) and the diversity of culture and local loyalties that inevitably come with mountainous terrain.

Mullah Omar and many other Pashtuns embraced Mr. bin Laden because the Islamist soil in Afghanistan was so fertile: Savage Afghan communism in the 1970s, even more brutal Soviet occupation in the ’80s, and civil war in the ’90s left Afghanistan with no transcendent loyalties beyond faith.

In a functioning tribal society, with its conventions and family hierarchies, Mullah Omar, or the suicide-bomber-loving Jalaluddin Haqqani, or the equally vicious Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, could not have arisen. They thrive in Afghanistan today because tribal society has been dying – especially for men of imagination, ambition, and militant conviction. And there is no border when it comes to radical Islamic Pashtunism: Militancy on one side of the Durand Line feeds militancy on the other. No doubt bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri would probably prefer to have the central front again in the Arab world. But in Afghanistan and Pakistan they have wars that their side might win.

We are all for killing the international cadre of bad guys — after all, the US military killed over 5000 Saudi jihadists in Iraq, a figure that seems incredible in itself (and that was before the surge). Perhaps Gerecht is correct. And it seems certainly true that only bad things can happen if America can be portrayed as cutting and running. But, unlike Iraq, which seems to have decent shot at being a non-failed state, it appears somewhat unclear what victory in Afghanistan would look like. (HT: Belmont Club)

The administration discusses Afghanistan with the Washington Post:

“The Taliban is a deeply rooted political movement in Afghanistan, so that requires a different approach than al-Qaeda,” said a senior administration official who has participated in the meetings but has not advocated a particular strategy.

Some inside the White House have cited Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese political movement, as an example of what the Taliban could become. Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, but the group has political support within Lebanon and participates, sometimes through intimidation, in the political process. Some White House advisers have noted that although Hezbollah is a source of regional instability, it is not a threat to the United States.

There is plenty of disagreement about which strategy is best for Afghanistan (eg, here and here), but if the role model for the Taliban is Hezbollah, this can’t end well.

All of a sudden Iran seems to have gone from a back-burner topic to one that suddenly seems imminent. Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post has taken a look at current American policy and apparently doesn’t much like what he sees:

What of Thursday’s talks in Geneva? Iran agreed to international inspections of its new nuclear facility and to ship out of the country some of the uranium it has enriched. Yet those modest concessions may complicate the negotiations and the prospects for sanctions. The headlines about them already obscured the fact that Tehran’s negotiator declined to respond to the central Western demand: that Iran freeze its uranium enrichment work…

In the meantime, talks about the details of inspections and the uranium shipments could easily become protracted, buying the regime valuable time…The Obama administration and its allies have said repeatedly that they will pursue diplomacy until the end of the year and then seek sanctions if diplomacy hasn’t worked. That sets up a foreseeable and very unpleasant crossroads. “If by early next year we are getting nothing through diplomacy and sanctions,” says scholar Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center, “the entire policy is going to be revealed as a charade.”

What then? Pollack, a former Clinton administration official, says there is one obvious Plan B: “containment,” a policy that got its name during the Cold War. The point would be to limit Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons or exercise its influence through the region by every means possible short of war — and to be prepared to sustain the effort over years, maybe decades. It’s an option that has been lurking at the back of the debate about Iran for years. “In their heart of hearts I think the Obama administration knows that this is where this is going,” Pollack says.

I suspect he’s right. I also don’t expect Obama and his aides to begin talking about a policy shift anytime soon. For the next few months we’ll keep hearing about negotiations, sanctions and possibly Israeli military action as ways to stop an Iranian bomb. By far the best chance for a breakthrough, as I see it, lies in a victory by the Iranian opposition over the current regime. If that doesn’t happen, it may soon get harder to disguise the hollowness of Western policy.

One of the very strange aspects of the current situation is that in December of 2007 the controversial new NIE said that Iran “was less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.” NIE’s have been known to err, of course; dissenters from the 2007 NIE said that Iran did not stop its weapons program in 2003, but dispersed it and hid it better.

Maybe we’re wrong, but it seems to us that the level of anxiety in the Western powers seems a lot greater in recent days. What do they know that they are not telling us? Is it the IAEA’s secret annex, as this NYT piece says, revealing “that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device”? (And what’s the deal with the strange report that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Jewish?)

Tony Cordesman in the WSJ:

Iran has acquired North Korean and other nuclear weapons design data through sources like the sales network once led by the former head of Pakistan’s nuclear program, A. Q. Khan. Iran has all of the technology and production and manufacturing capabilities needed for fission weapons.

It has acquired the technology to make the explosives needed for a gun or implosion device, the triggering components, and the neutron initiator and reflectors. It has experimented with machine uranium and plutonium processing.

It has put massive resources into a medium-range missile program that has the range payload to carry nuclear weapons and that makes no sense with conventional warheads. It has also worked on nuclear weapons designs for missile warheads. These capabilities are dispersed in many facilities in many cities and remote areas, and often into many buildings in each facility

We do not believe it is possible to successfully negotiate with this regime for reasons that we and others have stated periodically. The US’s continuing “offer of a serious, meaningful dialogue to resolve this issue” seems feckless — but what do you expect from an administration that repeatedly prefers tyrants to the people they oppress?

The Washington Post reported on President Obama’s speech at the UN and said this:

It was only a few months ago that the president announced a new strategy for Afghanistan; McChrystal was installed to implement that effort. Now, in the wake of reports that the general wants more troops, administration officials suggest that another strategy may be needed. They cite a new set of conditions, including the messy aftermath of the recent election in Afghanistan, as a cause for reassessment…

When he was running for president, Obama found the war in Afghanistan a convenient policy foil for his opposition to the Iraq conflict, though one to which he seemed genuinely committed. Opposed to the war in Iraq, he was able to demonstrate muscularity on foreign policy by arguing that Iraq was consuming resources better focused on Afghanistan.

Now, some Obama advisers hear echoes of Vietnam in the military’s call for more troops and more time before the mission in Afghanistan can be expected to succeed. Meanwhile, outside pressure has built for Obama to listen to the generals and not to waver in his commitment of the forces they say are needed to defeat al-Qaeda…

At the United Nations on Wednesday, Obama sought to rally the world to act on challenges as diverse as the economy, nuclear proliferation and the environment. But Afghanistan is an example of how the United States must set its own course before other countries will follow.

The Post is right. Afghanistan is a real problem for this administration (as it would be for a Republican administration at this point), but it is a compound problem since Obama clearly articulated his administration’s new strategy as recently as March. It remains to be seen how effective Obama’s high-minded speeches will be in a world of Afghanistans, seemingly proliferating terrorist plots, and an emboldened, proto-nuclear Iran.

The per capita income of Afghanistan is $428. The per capita income of the United States is $46,859. Here’s the military situation: “‘Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term, while Afghan security capacity matures, risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,’ General McChrystal said.” Something is wrong with this picture.

Geoffrey Hunt in the American Thinker tries to understand the strange disconnect between President Obama and a very large portion of the American people:

Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don’t align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan. But not this president.

It’s not so much that he’s a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task — all contributory of course. It’s that he’s not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper.

Moreover, he doesn’t command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and his notions of how things work just don’t add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don’t make sense and don’t correspond with our experience.

It is breathtaking to contemplate the speed with which many Americans have come to register “strong disapproval” of President Obama. We don’t know that we would have used Mr. Hunt’s words to describe the cause, but he might be onto something:

Obama’s policy choices have revealed Obama the man, and have caused a reassessment of all the previous happy talk. Obama’s words and actions are often 180 degrees apart. The fact that this seems to trouble him not at all is deeply disturbing. It seems that many Americans now believe that something seems really off about this guy. That is a deep hole for a President to climb out of.

On the other hand, we could be wrong and David Brooks could have been right in his 2006 prediction: “I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” (HT: Ace)

Charlie Cook says that “the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats.” Here’s Obama’s take. AFP:

“We have been through this before, in Iowa,” Obama said, referring to the first state to hold a 2008 Democratic nominating contest, which saw him capture a come-from-behind win. “All Washington said ‘Oh, it’s over,’ hand-wringing angst …”

Then Obama drew parallels to…Sarah Palin…”The media was obsessed with it, cable was 24 hours a day,” Obama told a friendly audience…”‘Obama’s lost his mojo,’ you remember all that? “There is something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee weed up!”

Obama is one strange bird, and comments like these (let alone his newly found religious mission for Obamacare) make him seem all the stranger.

Who would have thought that we would have a President who says: “”We are God’s partners in matters of life and death.” Who would have thought that this same fellow — so fixated on religion — would skip a Catholic prayer breakfast on the US National Day of Prayer but have time for a longish broadcast speech to celebrate the start of Ramadan? Strange bird indeed.

It turns out there is suddenly a national security element to so-called global warming. It’s all part of a new effort to sell the folly known as cap and trade. The NYT elaborates:

a growing number of policy makers say that the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest. If the United States does not lead the world in reducing fossil-fuel consumption and thus emissions of global warming gases, proponents of this view say, a series of global environmental, social, political and possibly military crises loom that the nation will urgently have to address. This argument could prove a fulcrum for debate in the Senate next month when it takes up climate and energy legislation passed in June by the House…

Military planners are studying ways to protect the major naval stations in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego from climate-induced rising seas and severe storms. Another vulnerable installation is Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that serves as a logistics hub for American and British forces in the Middle East and sits a few feet above sea level.

Since cap and trade will hurt the poor and make everyone’s electricity bills “skyrocket,” according to leading Democrats, the new idea is apparently to sell it as a “national security” measure. Good grief!

Amir Taheri reports the real story behind the Iran election protests and finds “worldwide Freemasonry” and the Bilderbergs at fault, in the mind of this crazy Iranian regime:

the official Islamic Republic News Agency tells us that this supposed international conspiracy (involving the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and France) started eight years ago with the aim of toppling the Khomeinist regime…During the Bush administration, “the neocons” persuaded the president to “green light” efforts to topple the regime. Somehow, Washington enlisted the support of “world Freemasonry,” which, acting through the so-called Bilderburg Group, managed to persuade Iran’s then-President Muhammad Khatami to join secret efforts to “turn Iran into a secular state.”

Then, the tale goes, Soros and several US think tanks started sending their agents to Iran to recruit and train operatives for regime change. And the Bush administration created a special Iran center in Dubai, modeled on the Riga Center that Washington set up to subvert the Soviet Union in the 1930s. With Liz Cheney as the supposed coordinator, the plot supposedly soon won the support of several European countries…

The IRNA reports name scores of prominent Iranians, including many former senior regime officials, as “figures involved in the regime-change plot.” Many are already under arrest; others have fled into exile. Also accused are Mir Hussein Mousavi and Ayatollah Mehdi Karrubi, two of the defeated candidates in the June 12 presidential election — indicating the regime’s determination to move against them at some point. Indeed, the reports implicate almost all Iranian political groups and parties in the alleged plot, sparing only supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

What a swell idea to sit down and negotiate with people who have such a reality-based worldview.

Andrew Sullivan, who has done a very good job of linking the various internet postings in the Iranian civil strife, said this amusing and absurd video was “why Obama was watching his words” on Iran. If that is valid, and this crude anti-American propaganda is effective, then it hardly matters what an American government says, the people are so paranoid and gullible. (There is evidence to support this contention.)

We see the government video quite differently. The video shows that the Iranian government is very concerned about “secret messages” coming in over satellite TV, and about the use of the internet for subversive purposes. The video makes the point that if you plot against the government you will get caught because the government has spies everywhere.

The creepiest element is that the bad guy (pro-American) in the film gets caught because his sister rats him out by calling 113, the national hotline to the secret police. Question: if a government is that paranoid and its security apparatus is deployed against the people in such a gross and obvious way, why should we be concerned that pointing out the truth offends them?