They talked about how its the "militants" running the show, and sending a clear message to all the regional heads (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia) who are way too cozy with the U.S. for the militants liking. Then they showed some talking head in Lebanon spouting some crap, I forget about what specifically, but it was nonsense about negotiations and getting back to the road-map-for-peace. At which time I threw my shoe at the TV screaming what in the hell have they been doing for the last 10 or 15 years?!?!?!? Arafat had the whole deal wrapped in a beautiful bow handed to him on a silver platter, and Israel pulled out of Gaza. They talked about how until now it had been a quiet locally contained issue, but with the recent turn of events Israel has evidently decided to throw down the gauntlet with a vengence (and now has the very real potential to becoming a region wide imbroglio involving all countries in the area in a very short period of time.
Terry Moran asked if there's any sense in the area that there's anything the U.S. can do. The local reporter responded without a doubt that it is the local perspective the U.S. can exert a greater amount of pressure onto Israel so that negotiations can begin.
NO. No touchy feely in that segment. Neither was it anti-Israel, nor was it anti-U.S. They made it absolutely clear that the Israeli population is battening down for a hurricane, and that the military is ramping operations up and taking names.
No, the touchy-feely segment was the human-interst segment of the blind mountain climber group climbing Machu Pichu (and the leader of that group being the first blind guy to climb Everest).
What you seen was the last segment of the night, Sign of the Times, about what its like to space-walk on the ISS. They interviewed one of the astronauts who previously spacewalked at the ISS and he described it. At the end of the segment, which included breathtaking space footage of the earth as backdrop, Terry Moran was clearly visably impressed, "Wow. Too COOL."
I'll tell you this, regardless of your anti-liberal biases respecting Nightline of the Koppel era (which may be well founded), the present show is nothing like the old one. There's no softball interviewing, there's no soft-shoeing, there's no patently visable liberal bias. My perspective is that any political leaning of old is non-existant.
Since Koppel left, I've never ever seen anything remotely like what I heard FNC was reporting today by the man in the street Shep today, showing all the stunt-victim children and crying "Oh, the humanity!" Nope. You won't see that on Nightline.
They do segments occassionally called "Faith Matters". I'm an evengelical fundamental Christian. And I'll tell you there's no bull in those segments: they report the facts with no judgment or opinion intoned whatsoever.
In all segements the facts are presented out in the open. Period. The viewer decides. Frankly, I believe Bashir, Cynthia, and Moran are doing a bang-up job of an investigative pure-news show. Whatever you may see these peope do on other shows, opinion and editorializing is not seen on the present incarnation of Nightline. Flame away...