It seems to me that Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's only skill is to make war instead of peace. And unfortunately the people in Gaza are sitting ducks, and when they fight back he blames them and punishes them even more. Now the violence is spreading into Syria and Egypt, which is dangerous. Interestingly, Reuters is reporting a massive hacking attack directed at the Israeli Government.
Updated at 5:14 p.m. ET: TEL AVIV, Israel - Israel was prepared to substantially broaden its operation in the Gaza strip, the country's prime minister said on Sunday as its military planes continued to bomb targets in Gaza City.
"The Israel Defense Forces have attacked more than 1,000 terror targets in the Gaza Strip," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting. "We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas and the terrorist organizations and the Israel Defense Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation."
. . . Meanwhile, President Barack Obama said he fully supported Israel's right to defend itself but cautioned against a ground offensive.
"If this can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza, that is preferable," Obama said. "That's not just preferable for the people of Gaza, it's also preferable for Israelis because if Israeli troops are in Gaza they're much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded."
More than 44 million hacking attempts have been made on Israeli government web sites since Wednesday when Israel began its Gaza air strikes, the government said on Sunday. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said just one hacking attempt was successful on a site he did not want to name, but it was up and running after 10 minutes of downtime.
Typically, there are a few hundred hacking attempts a day on Israeli sites, the ministry said. Attempts on defence-related sites have been the highest, while 10 million attempts have been made on the site of Israel's president, 7 million on the Foreign Ministry and 3 million on the site of the prime minister.
A ministry spokesman said while the attacks have come from around the world, most have been from Israel and the Palestinian territories.
"The ministry's computer division will continue to block the millions of cyber attacks," Steinitz said. "We are enjoying the fruits of our investment in recent years in developing computerized defence systems." Steinitz has instructed his ministry to operate in emergency mode to counter attempts to undermine government sites.
I'm speechless. This is such a strange story, and gets stranger by the minute . . .
This morning the Middle East continues to be a hotbed of violence and our our embassies are under threat in Yemen and elsewhere.
Chanting "death to America," hundreds of protesters angered by an anti-Islam film stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in Yemen's capital and burned the American flag on Thursday, the latest in a series of attacks on American diplomatic missions in the Middle East.
. . . The spreading violence comes as outrage grows over a movie called "Innocence of Muslims" that mocked Islam's Prophet Muhammad. The amateurish video was produced in the U.S. and excerpted on YouTube.
U.S. officials also were investigating whether the rampage in Libya was actually planned to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
It was widely reported yesterday that the person who made the controversial film was an Israeli Jew named "Sam Bacile," but that turns out to have been an alias. He is neither Israeli nor a Jew, but an Egyptian Coptic-Christian connected to extremist protest groups in California.
I'm exhausted just writing that. Imagine if I was a real journalist instead of a mere blogger. This story gets more complicated every time I visit the internet.
Anyway, the guy's real moniker is "Nakoula Basseley Nakoula," and he has several other aliases, which we know because he was convicted of a check-fraud scam.
Nakoula and Bacile are probably the same person. A cell phone number the AP used to speak to someone claiming to be Bacile traced back to the same location they met Nakoula. According to court papers, Nakoula has a number of aliases, including, "Nicola Bacily, Erwin Salameh and others." Jimmy Israel thinks they're the same person, too. He says when he asked Bacile for a legal name for registration with the Screen Actors Guild, Bacile said the name Bacile gave him was "Abnob Nakoula Basseley." He was also around 55, the same age the AP gives Nakoula.
If they are the same person, Nakoula's online activity likely violates a previous court order. The AP discovered Nakoula is currently not allowed to go on the internet or use a computer without approval from a parole officer:
Nakoula, who talked guardedly about his role, pleaded no contest in 2010 to federal bank fraud charges in California and was ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and ordered not to use computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer.
Nakoula, who talked guardedly about his role, pleaded no contest in 2010 to federal bank fraud charges in California and was ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and ordered not to use computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer.
The Youtube account, "Sam Bacile," which was used to publish excerpts of the provocative movie in July, was posting comments online as recently as Tuesday.
The person who identified himself as Bacile and described himself as the film's writer and director told the AP on Tuesday that he has gone into hiding. But doubts rose about the man's identity amid a flurry of false claims about his background and role in the purported film.
Nakoula told the AP that he was a Coptic Christian and said the film's director supported the concerns of Christian Copts about their treatment by Muslims.
. . . Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla., who burned Qurans on the ninth anniversary of 9/11, said he spoke with the movie's director on the phone Wednesday and prayed for him. He said he has not met the filmmaker in person, but the man contacted him a few weeks ago about promoting the movie.
"I have not met him. Sam Bacile, that is not his real name," Jones said. "I just talked to him on the phone. He is definitely in hiding and does not reveal his identity. He was quite honestly fairly shook up concerning the events and what is happening. A lot of people are not supporting him."
Duh - I wonder why not? He is only connected to every Anti-Islamic cuckoo in the U.S. and must be a racist to create such a horrible piece of useless crap. If a Quran-burning preacher knows you (or any kind of book-burner for that matter), chances are you might cause some trouble in the world.
Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress from Bakersfield, Calif., has a small role in the Muhammed movie as a woman whose young daughter is given to Muhammed to marry. But in a phone interview this afternoon, Garcia told us she had no idea she was participating in an offensive spoof on the life of Muhammed when she answered a casting call through an agency last summer and got the part.
The script she was given was titled simply Desert Warriors.
"It was going to be a film based on how things were 2,000 years ago," Garcia said. "It wasn't based on anything to do with religion, it was just on how things were run in Egypt. There wasn't anything about Muhammed or Muslims or anything."
. . .According to Garica, her three days on set last July were unremarkable. The film's mysterious pseudonymous writer and director, "Sam Bacile," has claimed to be an Israeli real estate mogul. But Garcia said Bacile told her he was Egyptian on set. Bacile had white hair and spoke Arabic to a number of "dark-skinned" men who hung around the set, she said. (A Bacile associate also told The Atlantic he wasn't Israeli or Jewish.)
"He was just really mellow. He was just sitting there and he wanted certain points to be made."
Once, Garcia said, Bacile wanted a girl that "Master George" (aka Muhammed) was to sleep with to look seven years old, instead of 10, to heighten the outrage. But his Assistant Directors protested, saying that was too young.
When all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.
When the only advice you get from your party is to "be aggressive" and "attack Obama" and you desperately want them all to like you and to never be criticized for being wimpy, that is what you will do. You will attack Obama in every situation, even if it makes no rational sense, and even if it threatens international peace.
Just a few days ago, Romney was getting loads of armchair advice from frustrated Republicans who are livid because he is crashing and burning in every national poll. But their efforts to light even more of a fire under Romney seems to have lit the fuse to the bomb that is Romney's Libya response. For instance:
He (Romney) should be very aggressive and he should be adamant in his attacks . . . he needs to be severely aggressive.
~ Sarah Palin on Fox, via Last Word
The Romney campaign's going to have to make some changes. They're going to have to go ideological! They cannot continue on this 'Obama Mr. Nice Guy' bit. They just can't do it. It isn't going to work.
. . . I'm not saying go out and say Obama's a bad guy. But he's got to be tied to this economy. His policies, his ideas, his ideology. Liberalism is still a dirty word in this country - use it! Rush Limbaugh on his radio show
Speak Up, Mitt!
. . . It’s not enough to float like a butterfly. You have to sting like a bee. No sting, no victory.
~ William Kristol on the Weekly Standard
I keep going back to the millions and millions of dollars paid to these political consultants.
Election after election, we hire people who have lost previous campaigns; who've run campaigns that have failed; who have message campaigns where the message fell flat, and they keep getting re-hired. I don't understand that. I don't know why those are the people you hire.
. . . you're in this, you have one shot, man. This is going to be the first line of your obituary: you won or you lost. It's all on the line for the country, and it's all on the line for you.
~ Conservative Laura Ingraham on her radio show 9-10-12
Ouch - no candidate wants to see the word "obituary" especially when he is sinking in the polls. That's scary talk.
And finally, this from Jennifer Rubin who wrote a scathing analysis of Romney's 9/11 speech on the same day that the campaign decided to push back on Libya. Rubin told them to "seize the moment" and not put things through the "mushy" "Boston Blender," which is a pointed slap at Romney's closest surrogates from his Massachusetts days, the guys Romney trusts to write his policies and speeches:
On Romney's 9/11 Speech to the National Guard Association
This was a wasted opportunity when he could have shown some mettle. His foreign policy message, not unlike his domestic policy message, is getting put through the Boston blender, it seems, coming out mush. That would be mush with no flavor.
. . . Now is not the time for sweet vignettes; it’s time for him to seize the moment. That requires Romney to sharpen and beef up his message.
~ Jennifer Rubin on Washington Post
"Beef it up" guys, or your foreign policy is "mush." I wonder what Jennifer Rubin will write about today, if she still has a job?
All this free advice is looking strategically WRONG on so many levels now, going against the best interest of the candidate and the party. But perhaps they did all the voters a huge favor by throwing the spotlight on Romney's foreign policy incompetance.
On Tuesday night, the Cairo Embassy issued a statement trying to cool things down surrounding a volatile situation involving an anti-Islamic film made by an Israeli, which said:
"The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others."
That's a rather standard representation of the U.S. position on freedom of religion, right? But because it wasn't anti-Islam in a Moslem country, the stupids came out of the woodwork to condemn it.
Apparently President Obama can’t see Egypt and Libya from his house. On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks ever perpetrated on America, our embassy in Cairo and our consulate in Benghazi were attacked by violent Islamic mobs. In Cairo, they scaled the walls of our embassy, destroyed our flag, and replaced it with a black Islamic banner. In Benghazi, the armed gunmen set fire to our consulate and killed an American staff member. The Islamic radicals claim that these attacks are in protest to some film criticizing Islam. In response to this, the U.S. embassy in Cairo issued a statement that was so outrageous many of us thought it must be a satire. The embassy actually apologized to the violent mob attacking us, and it even went so far as to chastise those who use free speech to “hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” (Funny, the current administration has no problem hurting the “religious feelings” of Catholics.)
But where is the president’s statement about this? These countries represent his much touted “Arab Spring.” How’s that Arab Spring working out for us now? Have we received an apology yet from our “friends” in the Muslim Brotherhood for the assault on our embassy?
It’s about time our president stood up for America and condemned these Islamic extremists. I realize there must be a lot on his mind these days – what with our economy’s abysmal jobless numbers and Moody’s new warning about yet another downgrade to our nation’s credit rating due to the current administration’s failure to come up with a credible deficit reduction plan. And, of course, he has a busy schedule – with all those rounds of golf, softball interviews with the “Pimp with the Limp,” and fundraising dinners with his corporate cronies. But our nation’s security should be of utmost importance to our Commander-in-chief. America can’t afford any more “leading from behind” in such a dangerous world. We already know that President Obama likes to “speak softly” to our enemies. If he doesn’t have a “big stick” to carry, maybe it’s time for him to grow one.
- Sarah Palin
Clearly, Priebus, the guy who compared women to caterpillars, and Ms. Palin Malaprop are two of the stupidest people EVER to reach a level of eminence in our society.
So why does the Romney Camp follow their lead? I guess we have to assume they are just a confederacy of dunces as well. Because look at Romney's statement from Tuesday night, which echoes Palin and Priebus: via Washington Post
I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.
I also believe the administration was wrong to stand by a statement sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt, instead of condemning their actions. It’s never too early for the United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values.
The White House distanced itself last night from the statement, saying it wasn’t cleared by Washington. That reflects the mixed signals they’re sending to the world.
The attacks in Libya and Egypt underscore that the world remains a dangerous place and that American leadership is still sorely needed. In the face of this violence, American cannot shrink from the responsibility to lead. American leadership is necessary to ensure that events in the region don’t spin out of control. We cannot hesitate to use our influence in the region to support those who share our values and our interests.
Today Republicans want answers about who is running the show:
Who told Mr. Romney to issue a political broadside against the commander-in-chief the day after a U.S. ambassador was murdered?
~ Joe Scarborough of MSNBC
O'Donnell points to Richard Williamson, Romney foreign policy adviser, quoted in The Daily Beast:
When asked if the Romney campaign did the right thing by releasing a statement slamming Barack Obama for a failure of leadership in the wake of a series of brutal attacks on foreign embassies in Libya and Egypt, Richard Williamson paused for several seconds before saying just three words: “It was accurate.” . . . Pressed further if it was right to issue a political statement before the dust had cleared and the death toll was known, a statement that condemned President Obama but didn’t mourn those lost, Williamson said simply, “Sure.”
“Ty Cobb was the greatest hitter of all time and he batted about .355. And he is still the greatest hitter,” Williamson explained later in the interview. “There isn’t something in my 63 years I couldn’t have done better except con my wife into marrying me.”
O'Donnell calls that "The craziest thing I've ever read from a campaign spokesman . . . it is absolutely nutty." And rightly so. Foreign politics, especially in the Middle East, is not a game, so spare us the lame sports analogies. However, with advice like that, it's easy to see why Romney went to Britain and insulted their Olympic Games.
O'Donnell goes on to presume that Williamson would be fired post haste, but I'm not so sure. Look at Eric Fehrnstrom, hapless "etch-a-sketch" guy who is still running Romney into the ground months later. For a man who "likes to fire people," Mitt is almost too loyal to his inner circle of clownish advisers.
That is also the opinion of Washington correspondent Sam Stein of The Huffington Post who said on the show:
"No, I think he'll stay on the payroll, unfortunately. Unfortunately, it's a bad analogy.
There's an issue here which is Mitt Romney could have conceivably waited twelve hours, woken up, seen the news, and said, 'Listen, we all mourn the loss of life here, but it's time to really look at President Obama's strategy, vis-a-vis the Arab Spring.' And that would have sparked a conversation that may have been more damaging to President Obama than what's transpired currently.
The problem I think Mitt Romney has is that there's about three different factions within the Republican Party with respect to foreign policy. There's the people who are unapologetically pro-international engagement, the Neocons who think you can use military might to shape the world in your image. There are people who want to do it more subtlely, they're more realistic. And then there are the people, the Rand Paul types who want to disengage from the international community. So whenever Mitt Romney wants to put out a statement on Libya, he has to contend with three separate factions within his own party about what that statement is. And I think they look at that and say 'It is a lot easier for us to just go after President Obama on character grounds, accuse him of sympathizing with the protestors,' than it is to craft something that might be a little bit confusing to members of their own party.
And that's where he gets in trouble. . . .
. . . What you had this morning was Mitt Romney's advisers literally tearing down a campaign rally to set up a more somber setting so that he could deliver this statement in a sort of drabby dark Jacksonville office. Whereas Obama, all he does is step out into the Rose Garden and by sheer fact that he's President, he looked Presidential. And you know sometimes we look too much at the optics and the setting, and I think in this case the optics and the settings are a huge part of the story.
. . . There was supposed to be a partisan detente yesterday for 9/11. They knew about the embassy being breached. They planned their statement and they actually lifted the embargo to get ahead of the news cycle. They were very much aware of what they were doing. The statement was signed off by Romney himself according to the New York Times report tonight. They knew what was happening and if it were a gaffe they would have backtracked today. Instead they went back and they said 'No, we stand by that statement in condemning what the Cairo Embassy put out.' So no, this planned from the beginning and they totally miscalculated what would happen once they decided to say that Obama was sympathizing with the protestors.
A picture really is worth a thousand words. This pic from AP photographer Charles Dharapak probably deserves a Pulitzer Prize for capturing the self-satisfied smirk of a candidate who just made a complete fool of himself but has so little self-awareness that he thinks he has won a huge victory. It's Mitt Romney believing he is Ronald Reagan when really he is Ted Baxter from the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
PHOTO: Mitt Romney leaves podium after speaking about U.S. consulate killings in Benghazi, Libya via @aptwitter.com/CharlesDharapa…
Romney grabbed a hornet's nest when he tried to use a volatile situation in Libya for political purchase last night right at the time that our Ambassador to that country was being murdered. Yes, Romney and his minions are that craven. His weird idea that Obama is "apologizing for America" makes no sense anyway, but to layer it on top of an American death on foreign soil is simply a jerkface thing to do.
That Romney decided it was wise to throw down on foreign policy when 9/11 was barely over is unforgivable. That he decided to do it at all has probably put the nail in the coffin for his chances at the Presidency, mainly because his own party is so disgusted with him now that they probably won't vote for him.
