I’m a couple of days late to the game here, but if this is for real (it sounds a lot like a YesMen hoax), it’s just astonishing.

While Michelle Malkin frets about “our backward baseball cap culture” and Gwen Stefani’s wardrobe choices, one of Malkin’s rightwing colleagues, Philip Atkinson of Family Security Matters has apparently written an article arguing that Bush should have

“use[d] his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.”

The article states further:

The simple truth [is] that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide. Israel provides the perfect example. If the Israelis do not raze Iran, the Iranians will fulfill their boast and wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Yet Israel is not popular, and so is denied permission to defend itself. In the same vein, President Bush cannot do what is necessary for the survival of Americans. He cannot use the nation’s powerful weapons. All he can do is try and discover a result that will be popular with Americans.

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.

He could then follow Caesar’s example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.

President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

Shortly after the lefty blogs discovered it, Family Security Matters scrubbed the article (and all of Atkinson’s earlier work) from their site without so much as a whisper. No apology. No explanation. No statement disavowing Atkinson’s views. Nothing. All traces of Atkinson just evaporated from their web site and slipped down the memory hole.

As of early this morning, the article is still in Google’s cache, (note that it is printed under FSM’s heading “Must Reads”), but in case the article (titled Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy) disappears, Digby has reprinted the entire screed for posterity.

So, who is Family Security Matters? Turns out they’re a front group for the far-right think tank Center for Security Policy. Michelle Malkin extolled their web site when it launched in 2004:

Carol Taber, who has teamed up with Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, has started up a new organization called Family Security Matters to provide an alternative to the self-absorbed, head-in-the-sand klatches that pass for women’s groups these days. The website will be unveiled shortly, I hear, and I will keep you posted.

Family Security Matters Board of Advisors includes such Malkin favorites as Frank Gaffney, Laura Ingraham, Barbara Comstock, Heather McDonald, and Monica Crowley.

So far, Malkin has been silent on the Atkinson controversy, as have her bloggers on hotair.com. Stay tuned. If this turns out to be for real, Michelle and her cohorts will have some serious distancing to do.

Dave Neiwert at Orcinus has much more.