It was just a matter of time. Former Bush administration envoy to the Middle East Anthony Zinni has come out in a more vocal way against the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, and already the lackeys for the war are hitting below the belt, way below the belt. The charge against Zinni? Anti-Semitism.

In a particularly base and poorly written piece of invective called "Protocols of the Elders of Zinni," Richard Baehr quotes not a single word of Zinni's to support his very serious charge. If someone's conspiratorial hate is comparable to an anti-Semitic screed as vile as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you'd think you could find one blatantly anti-Semitic statement from that person. If he knows something we don't, Baehr refuses to share it.

The basis of his charge, it seems, is that General Zinni is critical of certain people working in the Bush administration who happen to be Jewish. "And Zinni names names--in particular the group he calls the 'neocons,' naming five men: Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, Richard Perle, and Ellot [sic] Abrams, as the key ideologues who caused this war to occur," Baehr writes. I'll take his word that these men are Jewish, but doesn't Zinni also criticize Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney?

"The left was happy to call Pat Buchanan on the rug for similar anti-Semitic slanders during the first Gulf War," Baehr claims. The left was wrong then. Baehr is wrong now. Anti-Semitism is real. By using the charge to smear political opponents rather than label people who actually hate Jews, boys who cry wolf like Richard Baehr make elements of society less apt to believe the real thing when it comes along.

Hello Dan,

I was wondering if you would get around to General Zinni. Usually the neocons wrap themselves in the flag and accuse their critics of being unpatriotic. I guess this wouldn't work with Zinni. Do you think we will ever find out who blew the cover of the CIA agent?

Guido