Correction, Please!(rectifying biased media coverage of international stories)(Brief Article)

Arafat: Terrorist for Peace?

ITEM: The Bush administration isn't branding Yasser Arafat as a terrorist "because there is more he can do to further the peace process, Secretary of State Colin Powell said," reported the Press-Enterprise for April 4th. "'Chairman Arafat is the head of the Palestinian Authority, an organization we helped create,' and has been working within the process."

CORRECTION: Even Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, calls Arafat a terrorist. Barak admits it's time to "to tell the truth about him," saying Arafat "happens to behave like a terrorist, he looks like one and he walks like one so maybe he really is a terrorist."

Arafat repeatedly violates the Oslo Accords, and about half of the terrorist attacks on Israel are carried out by his faction; others are made by rival terrorists willing to work with Arafat when it suits them. Hamas leaders, who acknowledge siding with Arafat, recently boasted about how suicide bombers are now more deadly because they are using weapons-grade explosives. Hamas also acknowledges that they decide when their followers should attack. Hamas leader Abdel Randisi says the use of suicide bombers "is the same as their F-16."

Savimbi Betrayed

ITEM: Reuters reported on March 30th that the Angolan government and "arch-enemy UNITA rebels signed a preliminary cease-fire agreement aimed at ending Africa's longest civil war." General Geraldo Sachipengo Nunda, who signed for the government, said that the deal would "allow us to eradicate the evils of war."

Among those at the signing were representatives of the United Nations, Portugal, Russia, and the United States. "'It's obvious from the spirit we've seen here and the way this is evolving that this is something that comes from within the Angolans themselves,' U.S. Ambassador Christopher Dell told Reuters...."