The NY Times quoted a senior Israeli official who suggested “someone in the administration is trying to preempt Prime Minister Netanyahu’s criticism of an imminent and highly problematic deal with Iran. It is a transparent attempt to discredit the messenger instead of dealing with the substance of his criticism.”
And so what we have here, according to this anonymous official, is an attempt to use a schoolyard slur to divert attention from a nuclear bomb.
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Probably not, although the identity of the cussing official continues to intrigue us. If Rahm Emanuel were still White House Chief of Staff instead of being the beleaguered mayor of Chicago, we would have known right away, it was Rahm Emanuel, because the guy has a really filthy mouth. Which means it had to be someone from Chicago, who is culturally inured to cussing, so we’re going with National Security Advisor Susan Rice.
So, regardless of who did the cussing, the White House was in damage-control mode on Wednesday, following the Jeffrey Goldberg report on a senior Obama official calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “chickenshit, ” various media outlets reported.
“The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit, ” the senior official who was too chickenshit to go on the record told Goldberg.
“Comments like that do not reflect the administration’s view and we do believe that they are counterproductive, ” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told the press, while not denying the veracity of the Goldberg quote.
The damage-control effort came mostly because all the Jewish media outlets in the known universe, as well as all the English speaking rabbis on God’s good Earth couldn’t stop discussing this latest affront to Netanyahu, who has been called a liar by the president, and received a slew of off the record degrading nicknames that rivaled those assigned to Ossama Bin Laden.
Back to the Iran nuke theory, the Times noted that the Nov. 24 deadline for shutting down the Iranian nuclear program or else we’ll bomb y’all is “looming, ” and the Netanyahu government has become increasingly concerned over signs of an international deal that lets Iran keep its nuclear program, but just tie a police crime scene ribbon around it and pinky swear not to touch it ever again.
In return, the world will lift the economic sanctions. Also, Obama’s people have already said the Administration plans to move on dropping the Iran sanctions without a vote on the deal in the Republican Congress, where it would surely die.
So, brace yourselves for an all out political war over the Iran nukes between Israel, the House of Representatives and, should the Republicans do as well as Nate Silver says they will, the Senate, too, against the Obama White House.
And in this one, we’d expect many Democrats, if not the majority of them, to jump ship.
From Chickenshit to Armageddon in one month.
