Under the headline "Nations Hope Veil Lifts From Libya's History of Terrorism," John Burns writes in today's New York Times (8/30/11):

Television footage of the only man convicted in the Lockerbie bombing lying in bed, purportedly comatose with advanced prostate cancer at his Tripoli home, has provided a focal point for a question asked with new urgency in places far from Libya: With Col. Muammar el-Gadhafi's government in ruins, what reckoning is likely for the terrorist bombings that were once a signature of the former Libyan leader's war with the Western world?

So terrorism was Gadhafi's "signature," and many "nations" hope a full accounting will be forthcoming. What's the record that Burns has put together?

Obviously he talks about Pan Am 103, which is the most visible example. But there are serious questions about the link between Libya and the Lockerbie bombing. Burns mentions the 1986 Berlin nightclub bombing, which killed three people. The judge at the 2001 trial said the  Libyan government bore some responsibility, but a connection to Gadhafi could not be established. The Times account of the trial mentioned in passing that prosecutors alleged that the disco bombing was launched  "to retaliate against the sinking of two Libyan boats by the United States in the Gulf of Sirte." It's unlikely that many people remember these acts, which likely killed a fair number of Libyans.

The other examples Burns cites are support for the Irish Republican Army--similar schemes were undertaken around the world, including here in the United States--a shooting outside a British embassy that killed a police officer and the disappearance of a religious leader in Lebanon during a visit to Libya.

This is not to suggest that Gadhafi was innocent of any of these charges. His rule in Libya was marked by vicious attacks and repression inside the country.

But it's difficult to imagine someone at the Times writing about international hunger for accountability for terrorist acts supported, linked to or committed by George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. It's not as if it would be difficult to point to their "signature" acts--support for deadly, anti-democratic death squads in Latin America, the massive destruction and violence unleashed on Iraq, or the torture and prisoner deaths that occurred on Bush's watch. But something tells that if you were to to try to write about these "signature" acts of American terrorism in connection to either--or even to Henry Kissinger's record--someone at the New York Times might try to have you committed.

Glenn Beck's temporary replacement in the 5 p.m. slot on Fox News, Eric Bolling, has started out with a bang. On the July 13 edition of his new show the Five, the host declared:  "America was certainly safe between 2000 and 2008.  I don't remember any attacks on American soil during that period of time."

After Bolling's error, erasing 9/11 and several other deadly terrorism attacks from the Bush record, was pointed out by outlets including Media Matters and Huffington Post, the host returned to the air Thursday to issue a correction that sounded more like a retaliation against those who dared correct him. Bolling denounced the  "radical liberal left" and accused Media Matters of pettiness for pointing out the error, in an emotional tirade in which he exclaimed:

No, I haven't forgotten. I happened to be standing there, watching in true terror as radical Islamists slammed planes into the towers that morning. I remember the towers collapsing, killing 3,000, including 16 of my close friends. And I really remember trying to comfort the kids of my friends at their memorial services.

Bolling's temporary amnesia about the September 11 attacks puts him in company with many conservatives who have distorted the Bush record on terrorism  (Extra!, 3/10). But even the correction part of Bolling's tirade was in error:

Yesterday I misspoke when I said there were no U.S. terror attacks during the Bush years. Obviously, I meant in the aftermath of 9/11.

Among the terror attacks Bolling's revised position erases from the Bush record: the  September/October 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five, the December 2001 "shoe bombing" attempt, the July 2002 attack on the L.A. airport's El Al ticket counter that left two dead, the "D.C. sniper" attacks in October 2002 that killed 10,  the  March 2006 SUV attack on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus that injured nine and the July 2008 murder of two at a progressive Knoxville, Tennessee church, which were carried out by a gunmen who said he was inspired by Fox News contributor Bernard Goldberg.

According to the Huffington Post, none of the panelists on the show challenged Bolling's initial error about 9/11. But should we be surprised? Among those panelists was former Bush White House press secretary Dana Perino, who is on the record insisting to an unfazed Sean Hannity, "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."

According to Tim Dickinson's new piece in Rolling Stone, Fox honcho Roger Ailes lives in fear of "those gays":

Murdoch installed Ailes in the corner office on Fox's second floor at 1211  Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The location made Ailes queasy: It was  close to the street, and he lived in fear that gay activists would try to  attack him in retaliation over his hostility to gay rights. (In 1989, Ailes had broken up a protest of a Rudy Giuliani speech by gay activists, grabbing a demonstrator by the throat and shoving him out the door.) Barricading himself behind a massive mahogany desk, Ailes insisted on having "bombproof glass" installed in the windows--even going so far as to personally inspect samples of high-tech plexiglass, as though he were picking out new carpet. Looking down on the street below, he expressed his fears to Cooper, the editor he had tasked with up-armoring his office. "They'll be down there protesting," Ailes said. "Those gays."

And also Muslims (or janitors who look like they could be Muslim):

Ailes begins each workday buffered by the elaborate private security detail that News Corp. pays to usher him from his $1.6 million home in New Jersey to his office in Manhattan. (His country home--in the aptly named village of Garrison--is phalanxed by empty homes that Ailes bought up to create a wider security perimeter.) Traveling with the Chairman is like a scene straight out of 24. A friend recalls hitching a ride with Ailes after a power lunch: "We come out of the building and there’s an SUV filled with big guys, who jump out of the car when they see him. A cordon is formed around us. We’re ushered into the SUV, and we drive the few blocks to Fox's offices, where another set of guys come out of the building to receive 'the package.' The package is taken in, and I'm taken on to my destination."

Ailes is certain that he's a top target of Al-Qaeda terrorists. "You know, they're coming to get me," he tells friends. "I'm fully prepared. I've taken care of it." (Ailes, who was once arrested for carrying an illegal handgun in Central Park, now carries a licensed weapon.)

Inside his blast-resistant office at Fox News headquarters, Ailes keeps a monitor on his desk that allows him to view any activity outside his closed door. Once, after observing a dark-skinned man in what Ailes perceived to be Muslim garb, he put Fox News on lockdown. "What the hell!" Ailes shouted. "This guy could be bombing me!" The suspected terrorist turned out to be a janitor. "Roger tore up the whole floor," recalls a source close to Ailes. "He has a personal paranoia about people who are Muslim--which is consistent with the ideology of his network."

It's a good thing he doesn't run his cable news channel based on this sort of paranoia and fear-mongering.

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial (3/11/11) defended the Peter King hearings on Islamist terrorism against "our friends on the left [who] are busy portraying them as the McCarthy hearings and Palmer Raids rolled into one."

The editors argued that in fact, the focus on Muslims is justified based on the facts:

Since 9/11, there have been more than 50 known cases, involving about 130 individuals, in which terrorist plots were hatched on American soil. These include plots to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, an office tower in Dallas, a federal court house in Illinois, the Washington, D.C. metro, and the trans-Alaska pipeline. Most of these schemes were foiled at an early stage, though the Times Square bomber failed only at the moment of ignition. The worst attack was Major Nidal Hasan's November 2009 murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood.

In a useful report published by the Rand Corporation last year, terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins notes that the plotters were a "diverse group" that included Caucasians, African-Americans and Hispanics as well as immigrants (or their children) from about 20 countries. Yet all but two of the plotters were Muslim, and those two sought to offer their services to al Qaeda.

So much, then, for the notion that it is bigoted for Mr. King to focus on Muslim radicalization. This is where the current threat lies.

This is a complete misrepresentation of the Rand report. The report is exclusively about Muslim radicalization and jihadism, not about domestic terrorism in general, as the WSJ would lead you to believe--if anything, it's surprising that there are any non-Muslim jihadist plotters. (The exceptions were two men who agreed for their own secular purposes to collaborate with undercover FBI informants purporting to work for al Qaeda.)

The vast majority of "homegrown" terrorist attackers--those of all ideologies who successfully carry out an attack--are not Muslim, the report finds: Of the "83 terrorist attacks in the United States between 9/11 and the end of 2009, only three...were clearly connected with the jihadist cause." The other jihadist plots referred to by both the report and the WSJ were disrupted by authorities--quite often because those authorities themselves helped generate them.

One key point of the report, in fact, is to say that homegrown jihadism is not nearly as big a threat as it's made out to be--exactly the opposite of the argument that the WSJ is trying to make.

"Americans are entitled to an assessment of how serious a threat this is," wrote the WSJ editors. I agree: It's about time they and the rest of the King hearing supporters (that includes you, Bill O'Reilly) stop unjustly demonizing American Muslims and present the facts.

While defending Rep. Peter King's (R.-N.Y.) congressional hearings on domestic Muslim extremism, Bill O'Reilly (3/9/11) scoffed at the notion that the biggest domestic terror threats in the U.S. come from the "radical right" and not from homegrown Muslims. After playing a clip of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Mark Potok making that argument, O'Reilly responded:

Are you kidding me? The radical right? The last terror act assigned to them was the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.

In reality, acts of political violence connected to the far right are a regular occurrence. To make his claim, O'Reilly even had to overlook at least two domestic terror acts apparently inspired by his Fox News colleague Glenn Beck.

In July 2010 Beck devotee Byron Williams shot two California Highway Patrol officers when they stopped him on his way, as he later told police, to kill people at the Oakland California offices of the progressive Tides Foundation and the ACLU. Byron cited Beck, who journalist John Hamilton pointed out had aired anti-Tides commentaries on 29 separate editions of his Fox News show, as an inspiration.

Furthermore, the ADL reported that Pittsburgh's Richard Poplawski--who was arrested after a shootout with police that left three officers dead--was so inspired by Beck's anti-government conspiracy theories he posted to a neo-Nazi website tape of Beck suggesting the government was building concentration camps for dissidents.

And how could O'Reilly forget Jim Adkisson, who shot and killed two people at a progressive Tennessee church in 2008? In his "manifesto," Adkisson wrote that he "wanted to kill…every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book." (These days, Adkisson inspiration Bernard Goldberg is best known for his regular appearances on the O'Reilly Factor.)

But there's more. What about anti-abortion terrorist Eric Rudolph, who killed two and injured scores in bombings carried out between 1996 and 1998, including attacks at women's health clinics and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics?

And far-right racist and anti-Semite James von Brunn, who took a rifle to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. in June 2009, shooting  to death a security guard before he was stopped by police?

Perhaps O'Reilly doesn't consider Scott Roeder, the anti-abortion activist who murdered women's health provider Dr. George Tiller, a terrorist. After all, before his May 2009 murder, O'Reilly and his guests had demonized Tiller in 27 separate editions of his show, with the host dubbing Tiller a "killer" and accusing him of "Nazi stuff."

On January 17, city workers in Spokane, Washington, found a sophisticated bomb set to go off along the route of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Day march. Of course, there's a chance O'Reilly hasn't heard about this; the single mention O'Reilly's network has made of the crime was in a 100-word rip-and-read (Special Report, 1/18/11) the day after the march.

Then there's also the possibility that O'Reilly and his colleagues just don't care about right-wing domestic terrorism--especially when the news might undermine Muslim-bashing congressional hearings they do care about. On Wednesday, the day before King's congressional witch hunt began, federal officials arrested white supremacist Kevin William Harpham for  attempting to use a "weapon of mass destruction" in the Spokane terror crime. To this point, the arrest has not been mentioned on Fox News.

Today the New York Times reports that an arrest has been made in connection with an attempted bombing at the Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Washington. As we pointed out here, the case has generated relatively little media coverage--in contrast to attempted domestic terrorism attacks (or even alleged plots) connected to Muslims.

The suspect is Kevin Harpham--as the Times points out, he is linked to a white supremacist group:

Law enforcement officials would not say whether Mr. Harpham had links to extremist groups. But the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks such groups, said that its research showed that Mr. Harpham was a member of the National Alliance as recently as 2004.

The Times story appears on page A20.

Someone wanted to set off a bomb at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Washington. Luckily the suspicious bag holding the bomb was spotted, which likely saved lives.  As the Washington Post reported today:

"The device appeared to be operational, it appeared to be deadly, and it was intended to inflict multiple casualties,'' said Special Agent Frederick Gutt, a spokesman for the FBI's Seattle field office.

Law enforcement sources familiar with the device, which is being analyzed at the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., said it had a remote detonator and was positioned so that any blast would have been directed at the crowd of marchers.

Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News wonders why the story hasn't received more media attention, particularly as a case of what would appear to be domestic terrorism. He writes:

When it emerged that alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner was an almost certainly mentally ill 22-year-old who seemed to follow some bizarre conspiracy theories but not the political rhetoric of Palin or the Tea Party, there was massive pushback from conservatives who accused the mainstream media of jumping to unfair conclusions. Most famously, Palin herself emerged to call this a "blood libel." The former GOP veep nominee was savaged for using that charged term, but you have to wonder now if the pushback from Palin is actually a case of "mission accomplished."

That's because with this new episode in Spokane, not only have the pillars of the mainstream media not raced to any conclusions, but they seem to be in a competition as to who can most ignore the story altogether. But there's no need to jump to unwarranted conclusions here; the actual facts have been laid out by the nation's preeminent law enforcement agency, the FBI -- that we are dealing with a case of "domestic terrorism," that the sophisticated device along the King Day parade route was capable of causing mass casualties, and the target was American citizens celebrating an icon of the progressive movement, Dr. King.

Maybe the implications are just a little too frightening for the mainstream media to want to deal with.

There's a fairly well-documented history of media playing down domestic terror threats that don't involve Arab or Muslim conspirators.  Those that do are treated differently; there are plenty of cases where law enforcement stepped in long before such plans were operational-- and yet much of the media coverage would still refer to them as a form of terrorism. The attempted Times Square bombing might be the closest analogy, and that received widespread media coverage, much of which called it an attempted terrorist attack.

In this case, it doesn't seem like the media want to call it terrorism-- or even news, for that matter. NBC Nightly News did a segment on the bomb plot yesterday, but anchor Brian Williams said this at the end of the report:

All right, Pete Williams on what could have been a major news story out in Spokane. Pete, thanks.

Could have been?

Salon's Glenn Greenwald (7/9/09, ad-viewing required) is extolling "The Significance of McClatchy's Act of Journalism" when reporting that recently released six-year Guantánamo prisoner Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil--one of many who supposedly "returned to or are suspected of returning to terrorism after their release"--"far from being in hiding, operates openly among officials of Afghanistan's U.S.-allied government."

Labeling Nancy Youssef's piece "a consummate example of excellent journalism," Greenwald also wants us to

note the central role the New York Times played--yet again--in spreading and given credence to pure government propaganda. And the method used to accomplish that is exactly what led them to help disseminate lies about the "Iraq threat" in the run-up to the war: Anonymous government sources leak something, they mindlessly print it without identifying who gave it to them, Dick Cheney cites the NYT article to bolster the lie, and then--even once the NYT is forced to admit they were used--they not only protect the identity of the anonymous sources who manipulated them, but they'll use the same exact method tomorrow--and the day after and the day after that--to report the "news."

What Judy Miller and Michael Gordon did in September, 2002 on the front page--that the NYT supposedly regrets so much--is exactly what Elisabeth Bumiller and her editors did here on the front page.

"As a result," Greenwald writes, "a blatant lie--that 1 in 7 released Guantánamo detainees 'returned to jihad'--became, as intended, embedded fact in our political debates." Read the FAIR Activism Update: "NY Times Ombud Agrees with Activists: Paper Failed to Question Pentagon Propaganda on Gitmo Prisoners" (6/8/09).

The folks at Fox News, so quick to denounce dissent as unpatriotic during the George W. Bush era, have now moved from generally hoping for the failure of the Obama government to wishing another September 11 upon a country too slow to violence for their taste. Mark Howard of News Corpse (7/1/09) gives us video and a transcript of Glenn Beck & Co.'s

suggestion for a remedy for our diseased nation that is so far gone now that there is only one solution: Another 9/11....

[guest Michael] Scheuer: ...The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grassroots, bottom-up pressure, because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. Only--it's an absurd situation. Again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently and with as much violence as necessary.

Beck: Which is why I was thinking this weekend if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.

While "sure Bin Laden appreciates Beck's advice," Howard still thinks it's "a bit shocking that Beck's counsel to Bin Laden is to refrain from attacking the U.S. because it would benefit the country by motivating Americans to demand protection against such an attack"--which means, Howard explains, that Beck "actually believes that the slaughter of untold thousands of innocent Americans is not only beneficial, but is 'the only chance we have.'"

Finding the May 21 New York Times article on unconvicted (often even uncharged) former Guantánamo prisoners supposedly "rejoining" terrorist groups "especially troubling" in that "it turns the truth upside-down," Dan Kennedy (UTV, 6/9/09) explains how reporter Elisabeth "Bumiller's story played into the darkest fears promoted by Cheney and his fellow conservatives by making it appear that terrorists captured on the battlefield and sent to Guantánamo would resume their jihadist ways upon being released." In reality, "the far more disturbing truth, borne out by the Pentagon's own figures, is that we are creating terrorists at Guantánamo."

Yet it has to be said that Bumiller herself is something of a recidivist. In a March 2004 presidential debate among the Democratic contenders, Bumiller asked what may have been the dumbest question ever uttered in such a forum: "Really quick, is God on America's side?"

At the time, Bumiller's question seemed like a faint echo of the insanity that had fallen over much of the American media following the terrorist attacks of 9/11--insanity that was practically defined by Bumiller's former colleague Judith Miller, whose credulous reporting on Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties helped set the stage for war and disaster.

Kennedy notes that "this time, at least, it didn't take years for the Times to come to terms with how it had been manipulated"--not that the Times' eventual "mea sorta culpa" for staggeringly deceptive and damaging WMD coverage exactly came to terms with much. See the FAIR Activism Update: "NY Times Ombud Agrees with Activists: Paper Failed to Question Pentagon Propaganda on Gitmo Prisoners" (6/8/09).

Attempting to add appropriate context to mainstream reportage of Sunday's murder of Kansas doctor George Tiller, the Media Justice Fund blog has reprinted (6/1/09) an October 8, 2006, Women In Media & News post by Jennifer Pozner titled "The Terrorists Who Aren't in the News: Anti-Abortion Fanatics Spread Fear by Bombings, Murders and Assaults, but the Media Take Little Notice." In it, Pozner recounts how, "on September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks that devastated our nation, a man crashed his car into a building in Davenport, Iowa, hoping to blow it up and kill himself in the fire." Yet

no national newspaper, magazine or network newscast reported this attempted suicide bombing, though an AP wire story was available. Cable news (save for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann) was silent about this latest act of terrorism in America.

Had the criminal, David McMenemy, been Arab or Muslim, this would have been headline news for weeks. But since his target was the Edgerton Women's Health Center, rather than, say, a bank or a police station, media have not called this terrorism--even after three decades of extreme violence by anti-abortion fanatics, mostly fundamentalist Christians who believe they're fighting a holy war.

Since 1977, casualties from this war include seven murders, 17 attempted murders, three kidnappings, 152 assaults, 305 completed or attempted bombings and arsons, 375 invasions, 482 stalking incidents, 380 death threats, 618 bomb threats, 100 acid attacks, and 1,254 acts of vandalism, according to the National Abortion Federation.

Abortion providers and activists received 77 letters threatening anthrax attacks before 9/11, yet the media never considered anthrax threats as terrorism until after 9/11, when such letters were delivered to journalists’ offices and members of Congress.

Rueing the fact that "every fresh incident of anti-abortion terrorism is a reminder that women’s health supporters are not safe," Pozner asks if we think of each anti-choice attacker as "a lone nutcase, or a member of that network of violent extremists?" Alas, "we don’t know, because journalists haven’t investigated. Nor," Pozner adds, "have they reported that just [in 2005], nearly one in five abortion clinics experienced gunfire, arson, bombings, chemical attacks, assaults, stalking, death threats and blockades." Her conclusion: "As we continue national debates on how to keep America safe from terrorism, journalists do us--and especially women--no good pretending that the threats come only from radical Muslims outside our borders."

Noticing how "in the past week, Republican politicians and pundits have been striving mightily to invoke fear in the hearts of the American people," News Corpse blogger Mark Howard has collected (5/25/09) some choice quotes from GOP members "blanketing the airwaves with assertions that President Obama's policies on national security (Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, torture, etc.) will result in another 9/11":

Cheney: "It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe."...

John Boehner: "I think this is a pre-9/11 mentality, and I think it’ll make our nation less safe."

Karl Rove: "They’re doing the wrong thing for our country, they're doing the wrong thing for our men and women in uniform, and they're making us less safe."

But another selection of quotations, from corporate journalists themselves, support Howard's observation that not only are Dick Cheney & Co. "accelerating the rhetoric," they also are "bringing along reinforcements to alert the terrorists that America is 'less safe' and therefore vulnerable":

Joe Scarborough (MSNBC): "I knew by the second day that America was less safe."

Laura Ingraham (Fox News): "I think you can make a pretty compelling case that we're less safe today."...

David Gregory (Meet the Press): "But do you agree with the vice president when he says that the country is less safe under President Obama?"
Newt Gingrich: "Absolutely."

Remembering all too well how the New York Times "helped sell the Iraq War with a bogus story about aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges and withheld evidence of illegal spying on Americans for more than a year," Consortium News editor Robert Parry (5/21/09) tells how the paper "is again mishandling a sensitive story in a way that panders to the right." Pointing to a May 21 Times headline and lead "reporting that a Pentagon study has concluded that 'about one in seven of the 534 prisoners' transferred out of the Guantánamo Bay prison 'returned to terrorism or militant activity,'" Parry writes that "that is not what the Pentagon can possibly know:"

Beyond the weaknesses in the Pentagon's evidence, which is only noted deep inside the Times article, there is the unsupported assertion by the Times that the detainees have "returned" to violent activity, thus assuming that the freed prisoners had previously been engaged in terrorism or other extremism.

Even assuming that the study is correct about one in seven engaging in militant activity after release, the evidence is lacking about the prisoners previous acts of terrorism because--if such evidence existed--the Bush administration presumably would not have released them.

In other words, the most that the Times should have reported is that the Pentagon study claimed that one in seven engaged in militant activities after leaving Guantánamo.

In fact, parry notes one scenario completely ignored by the Times' Elisabeth Bumiller: "it is entirely possible that some ex-prisoners became radicalized and joined with extremists because of their sometimes brutal treatment in U.S. custody at Guantánamo." Read FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Dangerous Revisionism Over Guantánamo: Citing Dirty Evidence to Defend Dubious Detentions" (2/09) by Andy Worthington

Posting his letter to the New York Times on FAIR Blog, FAIR activist bpb points out that not only is Thomas Friedman claiming that terrorism works, he's making up evidence to claim that terrorism works:

There is no evidence for Thomas Friedman's contention that after Israel's 2006 war with Hizballah, "Lebanese civilians, in anguish, said to Hezbollah: 'What were you thinking? Look what destruction you have visited on your own community! For what? For whom?'" In fact, in the month following the war, a public opinion poll conducted in Lebanon confirmed the opposite: that Lebanese public opinion strongly favored Hizballah.

According to a poll conducted by Information International from August 22 to August 27, 2006, 57 percent of respondents "supported" Hizballah's kidnappings of Israeli soldiers, which initiated the conflict. According to the same poll, 79 percent of respondents rated the performance of Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah as "good/great." These numbers are noteworthy not only because they disprove Friedman's claim, but because they also represent a relative uniformity of opinion across Lebanon's notoriously divided populace.

Furthermore, even in mid-October 2006, months after the war's end, a poll conducted in Lebanon by the Center for Strategic Studies found that 78 percent of respondents believed that Israel would have attacked Lebanon "whether Hizbollah captured the Israeli soldiers or not," thus signifying that a large majority of Lebanese were unwilling to place blame on Hizballah.

Based on these numbers, it is easy to see that Thomas Friedman is rewriting history in order to justify his current support of Israel's war on Palestinian civilians. It is remarkable that he seems to have assumed that his claims could not be fact-checked in this age of ubiquitous polling.

In the wake of NY Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman's call today for terrorism against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, a new FAIR Action Alert is calling on the Times to clarify whether this column meets the paper's standards.

You can post copies of your letters to the New York Times in the comments section below. Please remember that letters that maintain a civil tone are most effective.