THE BOOM-BOOM TWINS: TO THE RIGHT OF THE ISRAELIS ON SYRIA

I'm sure you noticed this yesterday:

Across a variety of Sunday shows [yesterday] morning, Republican lawmakers urged President Barack Obama to take further action in Syria, three days after the U.S. revealed intelligence that suggests President Bashar al-Assad's regime has used chemical weapons.

The lawmakers urged an international response by the end of the year. Or, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned, the "whole region's going to fall into chaos." ...

"The president drew a red line on chemical weapons, thereby giving a green light to Bashar al-Assad to do anything short of that," [Senator John] McCain said on NBC's "Meet the Press."...

Today The New York Times notes that this puts McCain, Graham, and their ideological soul mates to the right of the Israeli government:

A senior Israeli official said Sunday that Israel was not urging the United States to take military action in Syria, despite intelligence assessments asserting that the government of President Bashar al-Assad recently used chemical weapons in the civil war gripping its country....

"We never asked, nor did we encourage, the United States to take military action in Syria," [Yuval] Steinitz [the minister of strategic and intelligence affairs and international relations] said at a conference in New York sponsored by The Jerusalem Post....

Among the things Lindsey Graham is fretting about is this:

Graham seemed to warn that if the U.S. doesn't act, terrorist attacks involving chemical weapons could occur in the U.S.

That's lovely -- Graham is more worried that events in Syria could lead to a chemical attack here, an ocean away, than the Israelis apparently are about such an attack from a country on their own border.

It almost seems inappropriate to describe the incessant ginning up of fear by Graham and McCain as a tactic -- it's more like a nervous tic.