It’s gotten so bad that the Dorktator, fresh on the heels of Nancy Pelosi’s visit, now openly declares Syria’s anti-U.S. agenda.

In fact, he’s bragging about it.

Syrian President Bashar Assad predicted Monday that the US vision for a “new Middle East” would fail as the region’s conflicts continue to escalate.

His comments come days ahead of a conference on reducing violence in Iraq that will bring together Iraq’s neighbors - including Syria and Iran - and representatives of the big five UN Security Council members, including the US.

“Results until now do not seem in favor of this project, and what we are seeing now in the east is a resisting Iraq, and in the west a resisting Lebanon, and in the south a resisting Palestinian people,” Syria’s official news agency SANA quoted Assad as saying. “And we in Syria are in the heart of all these events.”

Way to go, Dems! Way to make me want to vote for you. Nancy Pelosi goes to Syria, and Bashar Assad admits that he’s working against American interests in three different parts of the Middle East.

It is so time to take down this rabid little yip dog.

I think I’ll be putting up Heroes discussion posts for the rest of the season. I had a good email discussion going with a couple of people. And people had some interesting comments last week about Mama Petrelli (super power of prescient dreaming, which would explain Peter’s dreams in the first episodes).

The online graphic novel fills in a lot of knowlege gaps, but it also (for once) managed to give a bit of a spoiler. If you’ve been reading it, you found out before last week’s show that Linderman had power, and what that power was. (Healing! And here I thought Linderman was the big guy behind the Superhero Kidnapping Factory.)

One of the things I love about the show is how they make you think, “Ooh, bad guy! I hate him!” and then turn around and make the character shades of grey. Except Sylar. Him, we still get to hate. Please let it stay that way.

In any case, “String Theory” is the name of tonight’s episode, and the theory itself posits that there are an infinite number of alternate universes. SF writers have used that particular aspect of string theory to their advantage. (I love the idea myself, because I’d like to see what would have happened to me in the alternate universe where my parents stayed together, or the one where I went to college in Seattle instead of NJ, or even the one where I said, “Buy stock in Yahoo? Sure, why not, I’ll take a hundred shares” instead of “Are you nuts? Who’d ever want to invest in a Yahoo?”)

I think that Future Hiro hasn’t changed his present because he can’t. Our Hiro couldn’t save Charlie, even though he tried. I think that they can only affect a different timeline. It’s too late for Future Hiro, but it’s not too late for him to help our boy prevent Sylar from nuking New York. Or Ted. We’re not yet clear on who does the deed in our universe.

We can talk about the episode later tonight, at least, those of us on the east coast can. If you don’t want to read any spoilers for this episode, I suggest you not read the comments here. However, please don’t post spoilers for future episodes in the comments. I really like being surprised.

But—but Pat Buchanan and his buds all say that Jews don’t serve in the U.S. armed forces. (Tell that to my father and two uncles. WWII and Korea.)

Robert Rosenthal, a World War II bomber pilot who twice survived being shot down in raids over Europe and later served on the U.S. legal team that prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, has died at age 89.

[...] With 16 decorations including the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for heroism, Mr. Rosenthal was a quintessential example of the young Army pilots, some barely out of their teens, who defied seemingly hopeless odds to carry out daylight strategic bombing raids against Germany’s industrial war machine from 1942 to 1945.

Despite being able to absorb punishment, the B-17 Flying Fortresses, carrying 10 crew members, took staggering losses over Germany, especially when flying raids beyond the range of their England-based fighter escort.

Mr. Rosenthal’s 52 missions included one, on Oct. 10, 1943, in which his aircraft was the only one of 13 to return from a raid on Munster, the rest having been downed by anti-aircraft fire and waves of Luftwaffe fighters. Mr. Rosenthal’s B-17 reached England with two of its four engines gone, severe wing damage and two wounded crew members.

But that’s not all. Look what else he did.

Born in Brooklyn on June 11, 1917, Mr. Rosenthal was football and baseball team captain at Brooklyn College, a summa cum laude graduate of Brooklyn Law School and was working at a Manhattan law firm when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He enlisted the next day and insisted on being trained for combat.

“I couldn’t wait to get over there,” he told Donald Miller, author of the 2006 book, “Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany.”

[...] After Germany surrendered, Mr. Rosenthal was training to fly B-29 Super Fortresses over Japan when the war ended in August 1945. He returned home to a law practice but soon returned to Germany as part of the American legal team chosen for the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

Aboard the ship bound for Germany, he met Phillis Heller, another attorney, whom he married in Nuremberg. During the trials, he interviewed ex-Luftwaffe commander Herman Goering, the highest-ranking Nazi defendant, who would evade the hangman by committing suicide, and former general Wilhelm Keitel.

Ooh, that’s gotta hurt. First he drops bombs on the Nazis, then he puts them in prison after the war.

Mr. Rosenthal is survived by his wife, sons Steven of Newton, Mass., and Daniel, of Weston, Conn.; a daughter, Peggy Rosenthal, of Manhattan; four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

He and his wife had nine descendants. They’re from the same generation of Jewry that was decimated in Europe. I always wonder—always—how many more Jews there would be in the world, if Hitler had not risen to power. A million and a half children were murdered… how many descendants would they have had? At a guess, tens of millions more Jews would be alive today.

Found this incredibly strange description in The Scotsman, which is often an anti-Israel propaganda rag. My great-grandfather settled in Glasgow after he escaped from Latvia (and being impressed in the Czar’s army), and my grandfather was born and lived the first fourteen years of his life there. My family left when the U.K. went into WWII on the side of the Soviet Union, which my great-grandfather loathed. Count me as extremely happy he emigrated to Brooklyn. Here’s the story:

THE city’s Jewish community have praised a German baker for producing kosher food for one of the faith’s weekly traditions.

Since Edinburgh’s last kosher bakery closed on East Cross Causeway over a year ago, Edinburgh Jews have been forced to either produce their own kosher bread or visit the nearest bakery in Manchester.

However, thanks to Bruntsfield baker Falko Burkert, who has worked with local Rabbi David Rose, they are now able to enjoy the traditional Jewish plaited loaf “challah” - which forms the centrepiece of the shabbat dinner, consumed every Friday evening.

Okay. It’s a puff piece on a good German baker offering kosher challahs. Good for him, and yay, and all that. But here’s the jaw-dropper.

Jewish woman Stephanie Brickman, who works at Edinburgh University, praised the baker for his help.

WTF? WTF? WT effing F? Jewish woman Stephanie Brickman? What, that’s a description, like, “Member of Parliament John Smith”?

I’m absolutely stunned. Did a quick Google News search to see if I could find a similar label for, say, a Christian woman. Nope. Muslim woman? Nuh-uh.

The other thing I am at a loss about is exactly how to interpret this. It’s just wrong on so many levels, that I am flummoxed.

I am tempted to put it off on Jew Cooties. But I’m really not sure what to do with it.

Suggestions?

Did you watch the 60 Minutes interview with George Tenet last night?

He was a great interview, and the 60 Minutes crew were thrilled to death with everything they got from him. Emotional, agitated, full of great quotes and serious looks on his face when talking about the toll 9/11 took on him, on his agency, and on the nation.

60 Minutes found him passionate, combative, apologetic, defiant, and fiercely loyal to the people of the CIA and their fight against terrorism.

“People don’t understand us, you know, they think we’re a bunch of faceless bureaucrats with no feelings, no families, no sense of what it’s like to be passionate about running these bastards down. There was nobody else in this government that felt what we felt before or after 9/11. Of course, after 9/11, everybody had that feeling. Nobody felt like we felt on that day. This was personal,” Tenet tells Pelley.

Here’s the part of the interview that I found the most revolting.

“Two of the 19 hijackers, in your files, in Langley, Virginia, a year and a half before 9/11 … they don’t get on a watch list. They don’t get on a no-fly list. You know these are bad guys,” Pelley remarks.

“Scott, they don’t. And honest people doing honest work, for whatever you know, all of these people who are doing the best that they can, and understand this in great granularity, understand all of this and feel this pain, we all know this. I can’t dress this up for you,” Tenet replies.

What happened?

“People were inundated with data and operations. And they missed it,” Tenet acknowledges. “We’re not trying to intentionally withhold—human beings made mistakes.”

But the 9/11 Commission accused Tenet’s CIA of being bureaucratic and failing to recognize al Qaeda for the threat that it was.

“All these commissions, and all these reports never got underneath the feeling of my people. You know, to see us written about as if we’re idiots. Or if we didn’t understand this threat. As if we didn’t understand what happened on that day. To impugn our integrity, our operational savvy. You know, the American people need to know that’s just not so,” Tenet says. “We’re the ones that stand up and tell you the truth about when we’re wrong. It’s a great thing about this government. The only people that ever stand up and tell the truth are who? Intelligence officers. Because our culture is, never break faith with the truth. We’ll tell you, you don’t have to drag it out of us. You didn’t have to serve me a subpoena to tell me I didn’t watch list Hazmi and Midhar. We knew right away; and we told everybody. Truth matters to us.”

See, here’s the thing. 9/11 happened, and nobody lost his job. 9/11 occurred, and Tenet had been CIA Director for four years, and Deputy Director for two years prior. And he still, to this day, refuses to acknowledge that the biggest intelligence failure in the history of the nation was in any way the CIA’s fault.

Your job, Mr. Tenet, was to ferret out the risks to your country. You blew it. Three thousand people died, and now we’re at war in two separate nations.

The nation doesn’t think you’re a bunch of idiots who couldn’t connect the dots. We think you’re a bunch of intelligence experts who didn’t do their jobs.

This isn’t a corporation that failed to meet its annual Wall Street projections. This is an agency tasked with the protection of America from foreign agents who wish to do her harm. The Millennium Bomber was foiled not because of intelligence work, but because of an alert customs agent. That was another Al Qaeda plot the CIA missed. Under Tenet’s tenure. Another “mistake.” And still, no one was ever fired. No one—until the Bush Administration finally edged out Tenet three years after 9/11.

Throughout the interview, Tenet kept on praising the work of the agency. Went on and on about the great work the CIA did in Afghanistan. Yeah, that’s the country where they missed bin Laden. Great work. Yep. Wonderful. Good to know Osama isn’t around anymore to plot against America. Oh. Wait. Guess that’s another of the CIA “mistakes” under Tenet.

You know, the CIA doesn’t get a bye with me for being human and making mistakes. Not unless after 9/11 they, for instance, conducted an audit of what went wrong, found the problems, rectified them, and set in effect new guidelines to prevent this from ever happening again. That’s not what I heard from Tenet. And we know now that the FBI and CIA are still not working well together.

Tenet should have been fired the week after 9/11. But this is twenty-first century America, where no one bears personal responsibility for anything anymore. The buck stops nowhere.

I won’t be buying Tenet’s books. Particularly after reading the outright lies already being exposed.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has now learned of a second, more stunning error in Tenet’s book (which is due to appear in bookstores tomorrow). According to Michiko Kakutani’s review in Saturday’s Times,

On the day after 9/11, he [Tenet] adds, he ran into Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative and the head of the Defense Policy Board, coming ut of the White House. He says Mr. Perle turned to him and said: “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear esponsibility.”

Here’s the problem: Richard Perle was in France on that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United State until September 15. Did Tenet perhaps merely get the date of this encounter wrong? Well, the quote Tenet ascribes to Perle hinges on the encounter taking place September 12: “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday.” And Perle in any case categorically denies to THE WEEKLY STANDARD ever having said any such thing to Tenet, while coming out of the White House or anywhere else.

He’s only human. He makes mistakes. That’s the explanation for the error, I’m sure.

Apparently, by virtue of having a big mouth. His seemingly erratic behavior, starting with his mysterious disappearance, artfully designed to provide as much fodder as possible to the rumors mill, his dramatic reappearance in Israeli embassy in Cairo to submit his resignation from the Knesset, the content-less articles by his supporters, unable to dispel the cloud of suspicions but preparing the background for an hysterical campaign - all this does nothing to answer the question of Bishara’s guilt, but does everything to paint a picture of a martyr for the cause.

And now another step in the well-orchestrated campaign has started:

Thousands of protestors took part in a demonstration in Nazareth on Saturday held in support of former MK Azmi Bishara. Among the protestors and speakers were representatives from each of Israel’s Arab political parties and members of Bishara’s family.

To remind our readers: the details of the investigation and its results were not published yet. The file was not yet delivered to the AG office that has yet to decide whether there is a sufficient case for the courts.

In four days the gag order preventing complete coverage of the investigation into Bishara will be lifted.

So, you may very well ask, why not wait a bit? Why had Bishara flown so conveniently? Why does he try to preempt the publication of the investigation? Why this hysterical propaganda war, getting absurd:

Former Balad chairman Azmi Bishara on Friday accused MKs in Israel of carrying out massacres. “Most MKs behaved violently in their lives and during their army service,” the former Arab-Israeli MK added in an interview with a French television channel on Friday.

Bishara went on to say that he did not have any information to give to Hizbullah but claimed that Hizbullah had “more information about the IDF that it could have ever dreamed of.”

Quite a telling statement, isn’t it? To top it, Bishara is already complaining that the insidious Mossad is out to rub him out. And his steely resolve to return to Israel to stand trial isn’t worth much as well, if your read the following carefully:

According to Bishara, he would face a lose-lose situation were he to return to Israel now. “Were an Israeli court to convict me, it would harm the legitimacy of the national Arab movement in Israel,” he said. “Were I to be acquitted, it would be seen as an acquittal from supporting resistance.”

Hardly consistent with his readiness for martyrdom, is it? But the Soviet-trained rubble rouser is hardly inconvenienced by this inconsistency.

Bishara spoke by telephone to the protesters, stating “our intellect and our words are our weapons. Never in my life did I draw a gun or kill anyone.”

I believe him - after all, rubble rouser does not have to shoot, there are enough simpletons he brainwashes to do the job.

Many of the demonstrators were also heard chanting, “With blood and fire we will redeem you Azmi.”

Whose blood do they have in mind?

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Yeah, I called it over a year ago. Moderation? Never.

Hamas Leader Threatens Renewed Violence
The supreme leader of Hamas threatened violence if an international aid embargo isn’t lifted and demanded in an interview published Monday that Israel release top Palestinian leaders in return for a captured soldier.

By the way, it takes the AP three more grafs before they get to the meat of the story. Why is that again? That’s right. The majority of newspapers cut off the story after paragraph three in the “World News” section. So of course, this is paragraph four:

“We are doing the impossible to end the embargo on our people … If, God forbid, it continues … the results will be serious,” Khaled Mashaal told the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayam. “The explosion will be in the face of the Zionist enemy.”

So, is that a threat for suicide bombs or rocket attacks? Because, well, rockets are falling now, and bomb attacks keep getting (thankfully!) prevented by the very excellent Israeli intelligence services.

Or maybe he’s just saying that Hamas is going to pull a Hizbollah. They’ve prepared for it, digging hundreds of tunnels and smuggling in thousands of rockets.

Then again, the Arab world is fond of saying “Give us peace or we’ll kill you.”

Yeah? You and what five armies?

Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli traitor who handed over state secrets to the British press, is once again lionized in the media.

And it’s in so many different flavors! What to choose? What to choose?

UPI:

Israeli whistleblower in trouble again
An Israeli court has convicted nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu of violating an order to avoid contact with foreign journalists.

Vanunu, a former technician at Israel’s main nuclear reactor, served an 18-year-prison sentence after he was convicted of leaking documents that led experts to conclude Israel had a nuclear weapons arsenal that ranked sixth in the world, the Post reported.

AP:

Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu could end up back in jail after an Israeli court convicted him on Monday of violating an order forbidding him contact with foreigners.

Vanunu, a former technician at Israel’s nuclear plant near the southern town of Dimona, spent 18 years in prison for giving details of the country’s atomic program to a British newspaper in 1986.

Ynet! (Via Reuters, and Ynet should be ashamed for not editing this crap out.)

Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was convicted Monday by the Jerusalem Magistrates Court of 15 violations of a military order prohibiting him from talking to foreign journalists and leaving Israel.

[...] Vanunu was sentenced to 18 years behind bars in 1986 after giving an unauthorised interview to a British newspaper about his work at Israel’s Dimona reactor. The disclosures all but blew away the secrecy around an assumed Israeli atomic arsenal.

And Reuters says that like it’s a good thing.

The JPost, also via wire services:

The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court convicted nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu on 14 counts of violating a court order to avoid contact with foreign journalists.

[...] In 1986, Vanunu, a former technician at Israel’s main nuclear reactor, gave pictures and documents to the London-based Sunday Times that led experts to conclude that Israel had a sizable nuclear weapons arsenal, ranking it sixth in the world. Vanunu served an 18-year prison term for his disclosures.

The lie has solidified. Vanunu is no longer a traitor who leaked classified information to a foreign newspaper. He is now a “whistleblower,” a term used to describe a member of a corporation or organization who goes to the press to complain about bad or illegal company policies and actions.

Because of course, Vanunu was right in the anti-Israel media’s eyes, to disclose government information. Anything that portrays Israel in a negative light is something everyone has the right to know. That’s one of the unwritten rules of reporting on Israel (and America).

Shame on you, Jerusalem Post editors, and shame on you, Ynet editors, for falling into the “whistleblower” trap. Mordechai Vanunu is a spy and a traitor, nothing more, nothing less. The man so hates Israel (and himself) that he converted to Christianity to try to erase the last vestiges of his heritage. I’d say good riddance, but he did immense damage to Israel, and I’m perfectly fine with leaving him to rot where he most hates to be.