Frank Gaffney, Raving Lunatic, Influential Conservative Pundit

Annapolis, Maryland (pictured above) sure looks like a nice place. And whatever else you're going to say about George W. Bush, he certainly doesn't seem like the sort of person inclined to sell Israel down the river. But not according to Frank Gaffney, who's delivered what almost reads like a parody:

It is fitting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chose the U.S. Naval Academy for the venue of today's so-called Mideast peace conference. The reputation of that extraordinary institution in Annapolis has been sullied in recent years by a succession of rapes of young women.

The punchline, however, is that this paragraph is calm and level-headed compared to the ones that follow, in which we learn that this regional conference is essentially the same as the Munich conference etc., etc., etc. Now you'd think that a person who likes to go around publishing crazy things would be a totally marginal figure. Not the kind of guy who would be a frequent guest on CNN and so forth. Especially since his group is essentially just a front for defense contractors and their lobbyists rather than even a proper think tank full of crazy people.

Photo by Flickr user Billtex48 used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

I think Gaffney was on the Don Kroah show last night on the local Christian AM radio station pushing his line. He's also decrying the Law of the Sea Treaty. You'll hear a lot of crazy stuff if you listen to those Christian talk shows.

Posted by SteveH | November 27, 2007 4:36 PM

I wonder if there's some International Clubhouse rule somewhere that a country which has one too many lunatics in politically influential positions loses their nuclear-weapons privileges for a decade or something...

Posted by RKU | November 27, 2007 4:46 PM

This article ought to disqualify Gaffney from consideration as a person of any seriousness.

To compare a mild statement of intent to reach a final status resolution between the Israelis and Palestinians as a gang rape - when 400,000 Israeli settlers live in Palestinian lands and no Palestinian settlers live in Israeli lands, when millions of Palestinians live in refugee camps and no Israelis do, when the government of Israel receives billions in aid from the US government and the Palestinians receive tens of millions, etc., etc. - is the worst form of hyperbole.

It is clear that Gaffney and his ilk seek the politicide of the Palestinian people as an entity. Such a position should be considered as unserious and as destructive as the "push Israel into the sea" view adopted by extremists on the other side of the wall.

Posted by Nathan Hale | November 27, 2007 5:09 PM

Nice picture. I visited Annapolis once; it was an exceptionally pretty place.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | November 27, 2007 5:17 PM

McClatchy has funny take on this conference:
Not even the name of the host city is safe. A humorist at a Saudi-owned newspaper, taking advantage of the fact that "ana" in Arabic means "I" and that "police" is a word widely understood in the Middle East, put the sounds together and arrived at: Annapolis, or "I'm the police." That, he joked, was a message from Bush to Middle Eastern leaders.

"You remember that I am the police, and not only for the Middle East or for the peace process, but for the entire world," the humorist, Hamad al Majid, wrote, imagining Bush's opening remarks.

I heard somebody call this conference a high stakes poker game where nobody brought any chips. That about sums it up.

Posted by joejoejoe | November 27, 2007 5:32 PM

Re joejoejoe

They didn't bring any chips because the three leading participants don't have any.

Posted by SLC | November 27, 2007 5:50 PM

Gaffney's column is brilliant, if anything too restrained. He should have elaborated on what utter disasters Bush's choices for Secretary of State have been. One can't possibly imagine better arguments against the pernicious and corrosive unAmerican practice of reverse discrimination euphemistically styled as "affirmative action".

Posted by nabalzbbfr | November 27, 2007 6:05 PM

I think "influential conservative pundit" is a little much; Will, Brooks, Gigot and Kristol are influential conservative pundits. Gaffney is better described as a "longtime Washington fixture" or a "Reagan-era defense official."

Posted by Klug | November 27, 2007 7:05 PM

Meanwhile, there has been only one person found guilty of rape from the Naval Acadamy in the last couple years.

Posted by John | November 27, 2007 9:11 PM

After reading the rest, JOhn, I'm pretty non-shocked Gaffney didn't know that, what with the fact that he's apparently orbiting an outer moon of Neptune in a Russian space capsule filled with laughing gas.

Posted by witless chum | November 28, 2007 12:04 AM

John: I picture a large billboard outside the Academy, reading:

CONGRATULATIONS CADETS!

NOW

(732)

DAYS SINCE LAST SERIOUS SEXUAL ASSAULT!

Posted by ajay | November 28, 2007 5:32 AM

There have been a lot of nonsensical articles published by Jewish fanatical nationalists over the years, but this was still a shocking piece. It is every sane man's duty to fight against Jewish fascism.

Posted by Jeff Goldman | November 28, 2007 2:04 PM