Last night’s on-air coverage of this story by CTV’s Middle East correspondant Janis Mackey Frayer was augmented with on-the-street interviews with Lebanese citizens who are clinging in dread to the skirts of the benevolent Syrians who may withdraw and leave them to the mercy of George Bush.
In the event that any doubts lingered about the depths to which Frayer will sink to weave a story to conform to her astonishingly transparent anti-Americanism, this money quote:
“While critics accuse the Baathists of terrible mistakes”
That’s right – “mistakes”.
In the parallel universe of rock hard stupid in which Janis Mackey Frayer has taken permanent residency, Baathist torture, murder, and mass executions are just good intentions gone terribly awry – like picking up a ceramic vase and having it slip from your wet fingers, or going a little too fast for road conditions.
Funny. That wasn’t the song CTV was singing when US immigration officials in New York deported Canadian Maher Arar to an uncertain fate and alleged torture in a Syrian prison. Or, wait. Now that I think back upon things, it was the same song -the US were the bad guys in that story, too.
To Frayar and her enabling editors, such crimes pale to mere misdemeanors when weighed against the sinister, hidden agenda of an American oil-hungry chimpanzee who has liberated 50 million souls from tyranny.
How many Lebanese did they actually get to say they were afraid Bush was coming? The mind boggles to think of the money they had to spend to find those people (unless of course they just paid a few Lebanese to say that stuff).
Two. Probably their own Baath party minders.
On the subject of Assad family/Ba’athist rule in Syria, there was an interesting allusion to the movie “The Godfather” in a Daily Telegraph opinion piece by Anton La Guardia today (Monday 14 March).
Discussing the Assad family’s grip on Syria, a political dissident suggested:
“[President] Bashar was second best. It’s a mafia. The ‘capo di tutti capi’ [Hafez Assad] has died. But there is no Michael Corleone. Instead Fredo is in charge.”
I thought this was a rather clever observation.
When I discuss things like this with a young muslim at work it is inevitable that she will tell me, get this…”you don’t understand.” Of course Michael Moore understands. There is no reasoning with these people. It’s ok for arabs to kill\mutilate women/enslave people because, well…you wouldn’t understand.
Perhaps Janis should compare and contrast her report with this excellent post from Rick Richman on, inter alia, the increasingly public Arab support for Pres. Bush:
http://jpundit.typepad.com/jci/2005/03/change_in_the_m.html