If you can't distinguish between Western partisan politics and the incitement of terrorist activity, there's no point in trying to reason with you. It's rather like saying Trent Lott and Adolf Hitler are just the same, since both made racially insensitive remarks.

Uh, riiiight.

No one is advocating shutting down stations that merely put forth the Islamist point of view. But al-Jazeera is a tool of enemy propaganda that directly incites violence against the US. This ain't that hard.

Also, here's the thing about crowded theaters under law. We're talking about American theaters. The US government says nothing about theaters in France or Algeria or, oh, Qatar. They don't fall within our writ.

The thing about Al-Jazeerah is, they are not an American operation. They have no special duty to the US. We have no special veto over their coverage.

Peters' column and your review of Through the Enemy's Eyes strike me as classic examples of Hayekian information loss. Really, amputation rather than loss. If signs crop up that things aren't going so well, get rid of the signs. Al-Jazeerah clearly has a receptive audience. That receptivity is the problem. Getting rid of the symptom (the satellite channel) simply masks the problem while it festers. Getting bent out of shape because a book simply does what its title tells you it intends to do is the same kind of thing.

I don't disagree that A-J isn't an American institution. It is, however, an organ of our enemies. And it's not tantamount to, say, the BBC or the Guardian, which have a clear anti-American bias in their coverage, but at least present something akin to the facts.

Despite TOEE's title, the book isn't written from the vantagepoint of our enemies but rather of an American intelligence analyst explaining their appeal. It's one thing to say that, from the viewpoint of an illiterate peasant exposed only to limited information, Jefferson and bin Laden seem comparable. It's quite another to actually pretend that's rational.

Off course, the moment that he betrayed Stalin (as one of them was bound to do to the other), then suddenly it was a just war and they were happy to go and fight for the motherland. Whose, ithat is a matter of debate.

Glenn is right off course, they aren't antiwar, they are on the other side.

Jim won't get it until his head is resting peacably on the small of his back.

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