SYMPATHY VOTE – AT 8:36 A.M. ET:  There is grief this morning, overwhelming grief.  While we don't exactly share it, rest assured that a key member of CNN's "reporting" team does indeed.  We bring you her pain:

How did CNN senior editor of Middle East affairs Octavia Nasr celebrate July 4? By mourning the passing of Hezbollah's Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. Here's what the CNN editor posted on her Twitter account:

Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.. One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot..

Fadlallah "famously justified suicide bombings," as the New York Times recalls in its obituary for him:

In a 2002 interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph, he was quoted as saying of the Palestinians: “They have had their land stolen, their families killed, their homes destroyed, and the Israelis are using weapons, such as the F16 aircraft, which are meant only for major wars. There is no other way for the Palestinians to push back those mountains, apart from martyrdom operations.”

The Times also reports in its obit that Fadlallah is believed to be responsible for the killing of 241 U.S. Marines during the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings...

...in 2008, Fadlallah said on Palestinian TV that "Zionism has inflated the number of victims in this Holocaust beyond imagination."

COMMENT:  CNN has some fine reporters, but there's an element at CNN, especially in its international operations, that is beyond the pale.  These people, like Octavia Nasr, reflect the left-wing views of CNN"s founder, Ted Turner, and the intensely pro-Arab views of its former chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, the single most overrated person in journalism.  Amanpour will now sully David Brinkley's old seat at ABC.

To praise a man who justified the bombings of restaurants and buses, and who may well have been responsible for the murder of 241 Marines, is beyond all decency.  Nasr should be let go, but it won't happen.  Amanpour built a team that will support her.

July 6, 2010