The Instapundit Glenn Reynolds stired up the moonbat cave today when he wrote:

“This has been obvious for a long time anyway, and I don’t understand why the Bush Administration has been so slow to respond. Nor do I think that high-profile diplomacy is an appropriate response. We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs’ expat business interests out of business, etc.

Basically, stepping on the Iranians’ toes hard enough to make them reconsider their not-so-covert war against us in Iraq. And we should have been doing this since the summer 2003. But as far as I can tell, we’ve done nothing along these lines.”

Which prompted Greenwald to blow a fuse and give us a half-baked history lesson on assasinations.

“Just think about how extremist and deranged that is. We are not even at war with Iran. Congress has not declared war or authorized military force against that country. Yet Reynolds thinks that the Bush administration, unilaterally, should send people to murder Iranian scientists and religious leaders — just pick out whichever ones we don’t like and slaughter them. No charges. No trial. No accountability. Just roving death squads deployed and commanded by our Leader, slaughtering whomever he wants dead.”

Yet it was the same Greenwald who wrote of Iranian involvement back 2005:

“There are some people, primarily on the Left, who are discounting these reports (and others demonstrating Iranian mischief in Iraq) as American fabrications designed to fuel the flames against Iran. That’s one of the prices the Administration has to pay for its alarmist and false pre-war rhetoric about Iraqi threats. But to anyone with an even casual knowledge of Iran’s historical involvement with Iraqis Shiites, it should come as no surprise at all that the Iranians are seeking to exploit the power vacuum in Iraq in order to maximize their influence there. That’s why it is so bizarre, and so infuriating, that we seem to have no plan, and no method, for impeding it. It looks more and more like democratic elections in Iraq will legitimately install pro-Iranian Shiites who intend to do Iran’s bidding.”

First Greenwald may be a “litigation attorney” but he’s ignorant on the law of war as applied on the battle field. During war the President of the United States can – and has on many occassions – issued orders to capture or kill enemy collaborators. However it’s really entirely unnecessary, because of a matter of operational efficiency taking out key figures and persons of command is not only “legal” but advantageous and saves lives in the end. Of course Reynolds is talking of Mulahs and scientists of which would be covered under Executive Order 12333, and although that two might prove advantageous, it’s would be highly impracticable.

Yet one wonders where was Greenwald’s outrage when Bill Clinton blurted out last year:

“I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since.”

Seems when you get a job at Salon it ups your hysterical factor a notch or two.