Digby: Sigh-Ops

I'm sure most of you have heard this bizarre story about Iran forcing Jews and other religious minorities to wear badges. (In a nice touch of historical color, the Jewish badges are allegedly yellow.) Well, it turns out this was simply made up out of whole cloth and filtered into the media through an affiliate of the Benador Group which include such credible wingnuts as Laurie "Saddam is comin' ta git yah" Mylroie and Michael "let's invade France" Ledeen. You have to wonder what they thought they would accomplish by putting out something so falsifiable. I think Jim Henley has it right:

Why? So that months from now, someone hearing about plans to bomb Iran, or seeing footage of bombing on TV, will say to themselves, “Didn’t I read that Iran was going to round up all the Jews and make them wear yellow stars like the Nazis? Something like that. Well, good riddance.” All the story had to do was live long enough to get into circulation.