The Pravda on the Potomac editorial board is competing with their colleagues at the Wall Street Journal in contradicting and bending the facts to their need.
Trying to blame all evil in the Middle East on Hamas and Hezbollah, they call as a witness the G8 summit statement (emph. added):
SOMEWHAT remarkably, the world leaders gathered in St. Petersburg managed to grasp the most important point about the current Middle East crisis: It "results from efforts by extremist forces to destabilize the region and to frustrate the aspirations of the Palestinian, Israeli and Lebanese people for democracy and peace." In other words, the current warfare in Lebanon, Gaza and Israel stems not from Israel’s occupation of Arab lands or its holding of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, but from a blatant bid by Iran and Syria and their allies in Hamas and Hezbollah to stop the creation of a democratic Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and the parallel consolidation of a democracy in Lebanon.
But that is NOT what the witness said.
In their summit statement the G8 said this (emph. added):
The root cause of the problems in the region is the absence of a comprehensive Middle East peace.
The immediate crisis results from efforts by extremist forces to destabilize the region and to frustrate the aspirations of the Palestinian, Israeli and Lebanese people for democracy and peace.
The WaPo editorial writers leave out the first sentence, which rightly blames the lack of a peace and a peace process as the root cause, or stem, of the conflicts. They pick the bit that fits their pre-determined case ignoring the real, broader conclusion the G8 expressed.
In this they take a lesson from Bush. In a press conference with his poodle, Bush used the same selective reading. In total he refers to the not-agreed-upon "root cause" seven times:
PRESIDENT BUSH: One of the interesting things about this recent flare-up is that it helps clarify a root cause of instability in the Middle East — and that’s Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s relationship with Syria, and Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran, and Syria’s relationship to Iran.
The WaPo editorial could have cited that soundbite and run with it. That would have been one of the usual pro-Bush pro-empire column based on something someone really said.
But by using a selective quote from the G8 summit, they make their readers believe that there is international support for Bush’s and their line of thought, when indeed there is nothing like this.
If their usual modus operandi applies, as I am sure it will, they will use this history as documented by them today, to fulminate about a nefarious deviation from course, whenever Putin, Chirac or anybody else will insist on the original G8 point.
First doctor what was really expressed. When later someone insist on their original position, blame them as flip-floppers.
Who taught them that lesson?