Prof. Juan Cole is a careful writer on Middle East issues - and of course an outstanding blogger. But Christopher Hitchens hacked into his private email group and smeared him in Slate. So Cole fired back - with the verbal and photographic equivalent of tactical nukes. Here's where the bombs explode:

All the warmongers in Washington, including Hitchens, if he falls into that camp, should get this through their heads. Americans are not fighting any more wars in the Middle East against toothless third rate powers. So sit down and shut up.

One, two, three, four! We don't want your stinking war!

We are not going to see any more US troops come home in body bags at Dover for the sake of some Cheney affiliate grabbing the petroleum in Iran's Ahvaz fields.

Read it all (scroll down to the photos to save time).

Elsewhere on the Iran Warmonger front, tristero unloads on "Iran expert" Kenneth Pollack, who has never been to Iran and doesn't speak Persian.

Now, given the fact that I never troubled to learn to read the basic language of medicine -or wasted a perfectly fine afternoon by getting my hands bloody in an operating theater - you might think that I have no business writing two words about surgery, let alone two entire books on the subject. Books, I hasten to add, that are thought classics, cited constantly as justification for current protocols. But with all due respect, I disagree.

After all, if Kenneth Pollack is thought a scholar on the Middle East, then I must be considered an expert on brain surgery (and colostomies). At the very least, given how hard I've worked to make my knowledge of medicine appear credible, it's only fitting that my opinion of what constitutes a proper approach to the elimination of cancerous tissue from the body be considered carefully by responsible leaders in the medical community.

And if you like, I'll be happy to diagnose your own brain tumor. And, what the hell, I might as well do the operation myself. Y'gotta start somewhere, after all. And to make an omelet, you do have to break a few eggs.