Remember The Pic Of Hillary And Obama In The Sit Room Watching Seal Team Six?

This pic, taken on May 1, 2011, has its own Wikipedia entry, which makes absolutely no reference to the widespread suspicion at the time that there must have been something hinky about it.

In May 2012, graphic artist Mara Zebest -- who was reportedly “working closely” with Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio's quest to prove Obama's birth certificate a forgery -- posted articles at American Thinker claiming that two famous photographs taken in the Situation Room on the day of the Bin Laden raid had been Photoshopped in order to create “The Illusion of Obama's Bin Laden Situation Room Leadership.”

. . . Six months before Zebest parsed the Situation Room photos, prominent conservative blogger Jim Hoft posted a story at his website headlined, “Swedish Paper: Obama Photoshopped into Famous Situation Room Photo.”

Citing a comment thread at Free Republic, Hoft embedded a picture from Swedish tabloid Afton Bladet featuring a caption asking readers “Do you see what is wrong with this picture?” In Hoft's telling, the tabloid concluded that the picture “must be a fake.”

I don't endorse those theories, but I'm never comfortable with an image that's just too good, which this one is. Which brings me to another photo from the Sit Room that was released yesterday in the belated wake of the Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel:

So OK, fine, it's a meeting, roughly a day after the actual attack began, which I pointed out in yesterday's post, and President Joe is heading it up. What do we know about Joe in meetings? Well, we have James Comey's recollection of how things went in meetings when Joe was vice president:

Former FBI Director James Comey recalled in his book that “Obama would have a series of exchanges heading a conversation very clearly and crisply in Direction A. Then, at some point, Biden would jump in with, ‘Can I ask something, Mr. President?’”

Comey continued: “Obama would politely agree, but something in his expression suggested he knew full well that for the next five or 10 minutes we would all be heading in Direction Z. After listening and patiently waiting, President Obama would then bring the conversation back on course.”

Except in the meeting over the weekend, there was no President Obama to bring things back on course. Having been in my share of completely useless meetings over the course of my life, my spidey sense tells me this must have been one of those, and everyone in the room was there for the photo op while they listened to Joe drone on for at least the fifth time about what he told Winston Churchill. Here's a hint of what must actually have happened:

The president knew a massive attack was in the works against our only ally in the Middle East, and he decided to go to the beach. Sure, Biden returned Saturday, but we’re back to these silly games from a most unserious administration.

. . . An unprecedented attack is about to happen against one of our allies, and this guy goes to the beach. Is it arrogance? Is it stupidity? Is it senility? Or is it a combination of all three?

But if you look at the actual timeline of the attack, which I discussed in yesterday's post, if the drones and missiles began to arrive in Israel at about 2:00 AM their time on Saturday, then the hundred or more slow-moving drones in particular had to have left Iran some hours earlier and had to have been tracked by US satellites from the start, which means Biden had to have been aware that things were under way before lunchtime in Washington, but it wasn't until 5:15 PM on Friday that he left for the beach -- just as, according to the timeline in my post yesterday, those drones were actually arriving in Israeli airspace, although US and Jordanian resources had already been shooting them down before they got that far.

So Joe knew exactly what would happen well before he left for the beach, and it was indeed happening as he was stepping onto Marine One to make the trip. But then, why did he have to cut the trip short the next morning? One theory might be that his handlers finally convinced him that it would be a bad look for him to stay in Rehoboth while this was going on, but I would almost say that the early return was scripted into the whole charade from the start, Joe races back to handle the crisis and avert World War III. By holding a useless meeting in the Sit Room. Right.

A story in the Jerusalem Post supports the idea that this whole thing is kabuki:

Iran informed Turkey in advance of its planned operation against Israel, a Turkish diplomatic source told Reuters on Sunday, adding that Washington had conveyed to Tehran via Ankara that any action it took had to be "within certain limits."

. . . The Turkish source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan had spoken to both his US and Iranian counterparts in the past week to discuss the planned Iranian operation, adding Ankara had been made aware of possible developments.

Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Fidan to make clear that escalation in the Middle East was not in anyone's interest.

"Iran informed us in advance of what would happen. Possible developments also came up during the meeting with Blinken, and they (the US) conveyed to Iran through us that this reaction must be within certain limits," the source said.

"In response, Iran said the reaction would be a response to Israel's attack on its embassy in Damascus and that it would not go beyond this."

One of my favorite contrarians is a YouTuber on the channel Romanian Tvee. Here's his take on the whole attack narrative:

At 1:24, he says,

When it comes to the Middle East, you got to understand that they do business a little bit differently than Western nations, especially when it comes to international politics. Like first of all, you need to understand how the nations are structured. You have the people at the top, the inner circle of oligarchs, and then you have everyone else. And the people at the top, they want to live normal lives. They want to drive their expensive cars, they want to live in their expensive mansions, they just, you know, want to enjoy the luxuries of life, but unfortunately in order to do that, they have to oppress everyone else, because it's a dictatorship.

. . . So they are kept in a level of ingorance that is far deeper than what's happening here in the West or in China. And a lot of the things that happen there are very masculine in nature, like their societies are also very patriarchal. So what they want the most is to see strength, right, like even though they are being oppressed by the oligarchy, they want the oligarchy to display strength, like that is the thing that they admire. Even if that strength is used against them, it doesn't matter, they want to see that their leaders are powerful.

. . . When you have something like it happened with Israel and the embassy, if you're the leader who just wants to drive the expensive cars and have a good life, you need to show the display of strength, because otherwise, you get uprisings, and it's not the type of uprisings that you get, oh, the truckers in Canada, or oh, look, some people are protesting in the streets, no, you can get, like generals that are switching sides, you can get the military doing an uprising, or you can get even assassinated.

. . . When something like this happens, the leaders do not want the conflict, they do not want war, because if they actually get war, then they don't get to drive around their expensive cars, they don't get to live their luxurious lives, but at the same time, they need to show the strength. So what they do is like this display, oh, we fired a hundred rockets, but they usually like phone the people they're firing the rockets at, and thy're telling them, yeah, by the way, clear those military bases, make sure that the airfield is empty by the time we fire it.

. . . A lot of these things are for show. A lot of these things are for the public.

This is insightful and correct, and it applies completely to the Iranian drone attack over the weekend. It was scripted by all parties, or maybe we should say by all parties except maybe the Israelis. The problem for the Israelis is that the October 7 attack wasn't a charade. Over 1000 Israeli civilians were killed, often after being raped and tortured. So Israel hit a consulate in Lebanon and killed the Iranian general who organized the attack. That wasn't a charade, either.

Biden's position is now pretty clearly that everyone's had their little kabuki, the Iranians have made a pro forma drone attack, we've had our big meeting in the Sit Room, and Israel now should shut up and play the game, no further reprisals, especially no reprisals that actually accomplish anything and make the Iranians at the top want to make another feckless show of strength. Let's all go back to driving our expensive cars and living the good life.

I don't think Israel works that way, even if Joe does. Israel is tired of that game; every few years, it costs real money and real lives to play by those rules. This is what Joe doesn't seem to grasp, and it's at the heart of the problem.