New York Times Wins the Alfred E. (What, Me Worry?) Prize

The more the radical Muslims huff and puff, the more certain elements of the governments of the West are eager to run and hide.

This might be reassuring strategy for the easily frightened, but the fatal flaw in this strategy is that there aren't any places left to hide.

The New York Times, inspired by the fictional Alfred E. ("What? Me Worry?") Neuman, reports with a tone of undisguised disdain that senior officials in the Bush administration and leading Republican congressmen have concluded that U.S. intelligence agencies are deliberately playing down the threat that Iran poses to the United States and the West. Naturally the Democrats, who regard George W. Bush as the source of evil in the world, agree with Mr. Neuman that the rosiest assessment is always correct.

When the Iranian government finally replied this week to the U.N. Security Council demand that it halt its uranium-enrichment program by Aug. 31 to qualify for certain incentives, the answer, as a senior Israeli official rightly calls it, is "flipping the world the bird."

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