Iran's underground nuclear facility, Muammar al-Gaddafi's missing egg rolls, and Glenn Beck's shaggy frog joke

June 19, 2009, from a New York Times report:

"When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used his speech at Friday Prayer in Tehran to denounce Britain as “the most evil” of Iran’s enemies, he was striking a chord with a deep resonance in the psyche of Iranians, the legacy of a long history of British imperial intrusions into their country’s affairs."

June 22, 2009, from a Christopher Hitchens essay titled Persian Paranoia: Iranian leaders will always believe Anglo-Saxons are plotting against them.

One of the signs of Iran's underdevelopment is the culture of rumor and paranoia that attributes all ills to the manipulation of various demons and satans. And, of course, the long and rich history of British imperial intervention in Persia does provide some support for the notion. But you have no idea how deep is the primitive belief that it is the Anglo-Saxons -- more than the CIA, more even than the Jews -- who are the puppet masters of everything that happens in Iran.

September 25, 2009, from Times Online reporting at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh:

British intelligence played 'big part' in Iranian nuclear discovery

Britain played a key role in gathering intelligence to expose Iran’s secret nuclear facility, according to Western diplomatic sources.

Officials in Pittsburgh said today that the British intelligence services played a “big part” in the hunt for concealed uranium enrichment capacity in Iran.

French and US intelligence agencies were also involved in the operation that led to exposure of the secret underground plant. Israel was among a number of other countries aware of what was being built.

If Glenn Beck hadn't handed a fake frog to former Ambassador John Bolton, if the Letterman show hadn't plastered their own translation over a portion of Gaddafi's ravings at the U.N. (Gaddafi complains that the wording of a Chinese restaurant takeout menu cheated him of his egg rolls), I might have been able to hold it together after seeing the Times Online headline and write an analysis worthy of the seriousness of the topic. But I'm sorry I'm laughing too hard to continue.

Here -- here's a New York Times link to the fast-moving story and reaction from a parade of officials, more of which will be plastered all over the evening news.

All else I can manage at this moment is to gasp out a warning between peals of laughter:

I had to suffer through eight years of dealing with Bush Derangement Syndrome, which prevented otherwise reasonable people from counting to ten before they made accusations against Bush that were based on faulty or incomplete information. I don't want to suffer through a replay named Obama Derangement Syndrome.

There are things going on above the security clearances of the talking heads, including John Bolton, who've called President Obama stupid and worse for scrapping the missile defense shield project in Eastern Europe.

Calm down, eh? Count to ten. Remember John Batchelor's dictum that the first three reports in war are always wrong. And take two doses of Glenn Beck's shrewd zaniness and call me in the morning.