In the early 1990s, I interned for a God-awful conservative talk show called “The Blanquita Cullum Show.” (Blanquita’s goal was to become the next Rush Limbaugh, but alas, she fell about 20 million listeners short.) Since it was my job to book her guests, I received a Capitol Hill phone directory that listed all the congressmen, senators, and cabinet members along with their names, photos, contact info, and prior professions.
I used to get a kick out of flipping to the page with my congressman, Thomas Bliley of Richmond, Va.: His profession was different from everyone else’s. He was a mortician. The Bliley family owned and operated a local funeral parlor.
It’s a shame no one tapped Rep. Bliley to be vice president. Since VPs spend most of their time attending funerals for foreign leaders anyway, a guy like Bliley could’ve done more than just attend — he could’ve helped out with the embalming process. I’m sure the new leader would’ve appreciated it.
It seems like a missed opportunity.
Either way, funerals are poised to become a high-growth industry. We’re about to enter the Golden Age of targeted political assassinations.
The novelty and creativity of how Israel made Hezbollah’s pagers go boom so swept away the mainstream media that they missed the larger story: Mossad was certainly aware that placing these pagers in the hands of their enemies would provide a treasure trove of actionable intelligence. Mossad is many things, but they’re not stupid. So they almost certainly embedded tracking devices in all those pagers.
This means the Israelis have been tracking Hezbollah’s “secret” leadership for months — everywhere they go, everyone they meet, everybody in their network.
Furthermore, with Lebanon’s close geographic proximity to Israel, Mossad undoubtedly has spies in Lebanese hospitals. So even if the actual beepers were track-proof, an eyewitness account of who’s hobbling to the emergency room with their balls blown off would tell Israeli intelligence all they needed to know.
And not to mention, all the visitors of Hezbollah’s injured VIPs: They’ll be dropping by the hospital as well. I’m sure that’s going to be very interesting, too. Lots of new data points to glean.
Because we already know what Israel will do with this intel: It's gonna turn terrorists’ testicles into confetti.
Political assassinations are nothing new, of course. The Bible details multiple assassinations; the United States’ precept of presidential impeachment stems directly from Biblical accounts of regicide — that sometimes, moral men are obligated to depose an immoral leader. Even our calendar tells the tale of political assassinations: We just left the months of July and August, two months whose namesakes’ fortunes were largely defined by assassinations — of either themselves or of others.
But what’s different now is that the information revolution has finally caught up to the craziest dreams and most outlandish fantasies of intelligence organizations. Twenty years ago, even if you wanted to blow up thousands of your enemies’ pagers simultaneously, the technology wasn’t readily accessible. Even if it was scientifically feasible, the plan would likely be cost-prohibitive.
And so the status quo lingered on and on. Sure, drones were added to the mix under President George W. Bush (and greatly expanded under President Obama), but that was more a matter of tactics than underlining philosophy. We were still operating under the old playbook.
This week marked the death of that old playbook. We’re now in completely, 100% unchartered territory.
Future historians might declare that the age of assassinations actually began in earnest with the Trump administration’s killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in 2020. It’s possible — especially since they try to pin everything else on Trump. But it would be a false statement. Trump’s actions were akin to lowering the hammer on a tit-for-tat regional nuisance; it was an attempt to deter further Iranian aggression. What Israel just did — and more importantly, what it’s about to do — represents a philosophical switch.
In recent weeks, President Trump has become deeply cognizant of assassination threats, to say the very least. This is the worst time in history to have a dysfunctional Secret Service detail! Please wake up President Biden: immediate action is absolutely critical.
Organized crime was running rampant in America throughout much of the 20th century. But then Congress enacted the RICO Act in 1970. Suddenly, high-ranking mobsters couldn’t insulate themselves from culpability. It was one thing when an underling got “pinched” and did a little time, but when they started locking up the Godfathers, it changed the game.
People act differently when it’s their a** on the line.
Israel has just launched the equivalent of the RICO Act in the Middle East. And now, these entire clandestine networks — whose anonymity was once their strength — have been exposed to the world. No more secrets.
They. Know. Who. You. Are.
And now, the terrorists aren’t exactly having a ball anymore. Instead, they’re losing them.
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