I realize that the Israeli/Palenstinian issue generates heated positions on all sides here at Daily Kos (well, everyplace, actually), but once in a while I read something about it that is so ... what is a word I can use without getting personal ... pointless, that I can't let it pass without comment.

If that pointless comment is someplace that is obscure, or is so lacking in any kind of intellectual credibility (like Instapundit), I usually don't care. But...

Well, a post by M.J. Rosenberg on TPM today has for some reason set me off.

I have not seen the "Insight" piece on Obama, but if it is claiming that Hillary Clinton's campaign are the ones digging up the dirt, that is a demonstrable lie.

This slander about Obama has been debunked by the non-ideologues at Snopes.com:

http://www.snopes.com/...

But more to the point, this pretty much establishes that the Clinton campaign has nothing to do with this, since it surfaced prior to Obama's announcement. I realize that I might be violating the rules of a diary by posting this as a diary as opposed to a comment (because it is so short), but appropos of MissLaura's recent post, I want to make sure that the material is out there to stop this dead in its tracks before the Fox faux report has a chance to infect the rest of the media. If I have violated an inexcusable rule, I beg your indulgence. Nothing after the jump. [updated to include link to MissLaura's diary]

I have noticed quite a range of opinion here on whether the United States plans to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran, and the implications if we did so. This opinion has ranged from those who believe that such a move by us is so lacking in common sense that it is highly unlikely (the "Rationalists"), to those who believe that Bush and Cheney are so insane at this point that rationality doesn't enter the equation (the "Realists").

Actually, both sides are right.

I think both sides would agree that an attack, if it were to occur, would at least at the start  be an air and missile attack launched from the two carrier groups we will eventually have in the region. Here, in fact, is an article from today's Arab Times that says the air and missile attack is planned for April. Its sourcing is sketchy, but it does fit with the other facts we already know. According to the article, the purpose of the attack would be:

One reason why much of the chattering class hates the Internet so much is because it has exposed them as having no clothes, although the image of a naked Robert Novak or David Brooks ought to be, if nothing else, disturbing, both to them and to us.

But this is old news, as is the fact that most, though not all of the exposed pundits, are on the Right side of the political divide, mainly because the circle they need to square, the one between their relatively rigid ideology and the unyielding tide of reality, is a virtually impossible task.

Watching columnists of all political stripes and states of intellectual undress grapple over the last half-dozen days with the president's most recent Iraq speech and policy, however, has been a quite entertaining, and as I explain after the jump, has brought to mind for me a long-lost personal memory from 28 years ago.