[KarlInOhio]

Colorado College president Richard F. Celeste, a former Ohio governor and ambassador to India during the Clinton administration

So that's where that pile of fecal material wrapped in human skin ended up. Please keep him.

[Shermy]

The selection of Ashrawi makes sense. Lefties are trying to limit and define the discourse to the West Bank and Gaza. It's the "palestinianization" of the present crisis. Their allies are Saudi, Iraq and Iran. Choosing a Palestinian leftie serves to hide and contort the true threat. Since the true threats, the "root causes", don't easily fit into their received anti-american attitudes, they're ignored. Choosing a muslim cleric would be more enlightenening, but that's not what they are seeking. They're seeking confirmation of prejudices, which the flare up in Israel a few months ago provided. That's why they got so excited about it.

Christopher Hitchens, speaking to them, has to emphasize what Al Qaeda's about - indicating how far immersed in denial and deflection they are:

I repeat what I said at the beginning: the objective of al Qaeda is not the emancipation of the Palestinians but the establishment of tyranny in the Muslim world by means of indiscriminate violence in the non-Muslim world, and those who confuse the two issues are idiots who don't always have the excuse of stupidity.

Saving Islam from bin Laden [Christopher Hitchens]