In America alone, there has been a whack-a-mole game going on for years, in which American officials--at the Treasury, Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, and so on--have been chasing down an astounding array of Iranian-related suppliers, front companies, money-laundering operations, and sanction-busting sales to Iran's weapons programs, including its U.N.

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Unfortunately, many attacks are handled outside this forum and ad-hoc crime fighting groups seem to pop up like a game of whack-a-mole.

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Mr. Assad's forces appear to be increasingly resorting to a brutal game of whack-a-mole by relying on increasingly heavy weaponry, said Andrew Tabler, a Syrian expert at the Washington Institute for Near Policy, referring to the carnival game where players bash a mole which rears its head from one hole, only to see it pop up from another.

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You can slap one of the Spice Girls in a variation of the old "whack-a-mole" game, or punch out John Tesh.

CNN: Flaming the famous on the Web

The abuses are numerous, and putting a stop to them can often seem less like effective law enforcement and more like a not-fun game of whack-a-mole.

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Prof Ashworth described it as a "bit like the game whack-a-mole" with a new method of resistance popping up every time a drug kicks a cancer down.

BBC: Mass cancer mapping centre opens

It's a sort of macabre game of whack-a-mole.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy

Copyright enforcement has become a never-ending game of regulatory Whack-a-Mole.

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But over the past several days, it has turned into another mallet in the whack-a-mole game of primary season.

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In the mean time, Joe Lieberman and his French counterpart can play whatever political games of web-based whack-a-mole they like.

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Since the embedded gyroscopes are used along with the d-pad and analog stick for navigation, selecting the right menu option feels akin to whack-a-mole -- unless the controller is held impossibly still.

ENGADGET: blogger-avatar

Of greater concern beyond the current contest is the lesson the current whack-a-mole nomination process has delivered for future political wannabes and former-elected has-beens hoping for their own 15 minutes of fame.

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