Monk

The epitaph of our Sisyphean decade of two agonizing wars was written last year by then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates: “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to send a big American land army into Asia, or into the Middle East or Africa, should have his head examined.”

-- Maureen Dowd at The New York Times

So much blood and treasure lost in that wasteland. Osama bin Laden may be assassinated, but he really did get a lot from his big 9/11 attack. What have we done to ourselves? Maybe we needed an enemy too badly.

The War on Terror has taken a new, nasty turn. British intelligence agents are trying to give terrorists some cavities. Surely, this goes against the Geneva convention or some international accords. Don't they understand? If we lose our humanity, the terrrorists have truly won:

British intelligence has hacked into an al-Qaeda online magazine and replaced bomb-making instructions with a recipe for cupcakes.

The cyber-warfare operation was launched by MI6 and GCHQ in an attempt to disrupt efforts by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular to recruit “lone-wolf” terrorists with a new English-language magazine, the Daily Telegraph understands.

When followers tried to download the 67-page colour magazine, instead of instructions about how to “Make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom” by “The AQ Chef” they were greeted with garbled computer code.

The code, which had been inserted into the original magazine by the British intelligence hackers, was actually a web page of recipes for “The Best Cupcakes in America” published by the Ellen DeGeneres chat show.

I like one LJer's comment, "I saw the headline about fighting terrorists with cupcakes and thought it couldn't get any better. Then I realized they were fighting terrorists with ELLEN DEGENEReS cupcakes. And the world was suddenly beautiful." I think that says it all.

(Source: Telegraph/LJ)