After 20 years working for CNN, Senior Mideast Affairs editor Octavia Nasr is leaving. Why? Because she dared to express sadness at the passing of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, stirring all sorts of anger from the right.

Evidently, if you're CNN, it's perfectly fine to hire commentators who refer to a US Supreme Court justice as a "goat f@$king child molester", but God forbid an emotional, somewhat easily misinterpreted tweet should be granted similar mercy.

CNN's internal memo (according to Mediaite) dismisses her with this terse explanation:

I had a conversation with Octavia this morning and I want to share with you that we have decided that she will be leaving the company. As you know, her tweet over the weekend created a wide reaction. As she has stated in her blog on CNN.com, she fully accepts that she should not have made such a simplistic comment without any context whatsoever. However, at this point, we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward.

In other words, she didn't carry the requisite press bias toward Israel?

Her original tweet (now apparently deleted) was this:

“Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

Yesterday she posted a clarification on her blog.

Here's what I should have conveyed more fully:

I used the words "respect" and "sad" because to me as a Middle Eastern woman, Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman's rights. He called for the abolition of the tribal system of "honor killing." He called the practice primitive and non-productive. He warned Muslim men that abuse of women was against Islam.

She also clarified her position with regard to his other activities with regard to Hezbollah; in fact, she made it clear that acts of Hezbollah had killed members of her own family:

It is no secret that Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah hated with a vengeance the United States government and Israel. He regularly praised the terror attacks that killed Israeli citizens. And as recently as 2008, he said the numbers of Jews killed in the Holocaust were wildly inflated.

But it was his commitment to Hezbollah's original mission - resisting Israel's occupation of Lebanon - that made him popular and respected among many Lebanese, not just people of his own sect.

In 1983, as Fadlallah found his voice as a spiritual leader, Islamic Jihad - soon to morph into Hezbollah - bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 299 American and French peacekeepers. I lost family members in that terror attack.

At the same time, she notes that he ultimately emerged as a more moderate voice against the harsher, more powerful Iranian clerics.

In later years, Hezbollah's leadership apparently did not like Fadlallah's vocal criticism of Hezbollah's allegiance to Iran. Nor did they like his assertions that Hezbollah's leaders had been distracted from resistance to Israeli occupation of portions of Lebanon and had turned weapons against their own people.

At first, he was simply pushed to the side, but later wasn't even referred to as a Hezbollah member. Rather, he was referred to as the scholar - the expert on Islam - but nothing more. During the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, his honorary title "Sayyed" - indicating that he's a descendant of the prophet - was dropped any time he was mentioned on Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV and other Hezbollah media outlets.

The only thing this proves is that when it comes to Israel and the Middle East, emotions run so high and so hot that I doubt anything resembling peace can ever come to pass. There is a centuries-old rift that gets scratched open by the softest fabrics brushing thin skin. It doesn't matter what side the US takes, or what side Nasr takes on these issues. I'm certain Nasr's position at CNN -- even though she is a Lebanese Christian -- has long been a bone of contention among the pro-Israel press.

I will miss her. She was one of the few journalists on Twitter who quoted Pablo Neruda and shared the sheer joy of her travel and her job. She loved that job. I'm sure she's heartbroken.

I agree with the sentiments of her Twitter fan, Bashar Hamad:

I wonder if all these people so quick to jump on @octavianasrCNN comment Re: Fadlallah's passing be so quick to jump on real hate speech

Not only wouldn't they, they're the ones who routinely step up and use it. Whether it's racist comments about our President or libeling Supreme Court justices, they not only don't jump on it, they embrace it in the name of the First Amendment.

ABC's Brian Ross has a history of bizarre "scoops" (like this one, when he announced that Hillary Clinton had indeed been in the White House the day Monica went down on her knees). And yet, ABC News is still proud to have him as their chief investigative correspondent, for some odd reason.

Now he overreaches on yet another story, this one claiming Nidal Malik Hasan attempted to contact al Qaeda. You heard it all over the news, right? Via Gawker:

ABC News' Brian Ross has a breathtaking record of recklessly inaccurate, overhyped stories that don't live up to the headline. His scoop yesterday about Nidal Malik Hasan's "attempt to reach out to al Qaeda" was one of them.

Ross' report yesterday that Hasan had attempted to "make contact with people associated with al Qaeda" took over the internet yesterday and sparked a furious round of speculation that Hasan's attack was part of an Islamic terrorist plot. The headline, "Officials: U.S. Army Told of Hasan's Contacts with al Qaeda," said it all. The far more mundane truth emerged today in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post: Hasan had communicated via e-mail with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American cleric living in Yemen who formerly served as the imam of a mosque Hasan had attended in Virginia. What did they talk about? From the Washington Post:

The FBI determined that the e-mails did not warrant an investigation, according to the law enforcement official. Investigators said Hasan's e-mails were consistent with the topic of his academic research and involved some social chatter and religious discourse.

We were confused this morning, because Ross had clearly reported that Hasan had made contact with "people associated with Al Qaeda," and the only contacts that other reporters were confirming were with al-Awlaki, who is, as far as we know, a single person. We called Ross and asked him if there were more "people." No, he told us, his initial report was only in reference to al-Awlaki.

"That's how it was initially described to me by my sources," he says. "Given what they told me, that's all I could say. It's a strange use of the word 'people.' But when pinned down, my sources said it's just al-Awlaki."

A strange use, indeed. How about false, too? Especially because Ross' original story did, in fact, report that al-Awliki was among the "people" Hasan was suspected of having contacted. So he reported that Hasan contacted more than one person associated with al Qaeda, and then named one person that he was suspected of contacting. What he apparently didn't bother to do was "pin his sources down" on exactly what they were saying. The result was a clear suggestion that Hasan had tried to communicate with the al Qaeda network on more than one occasion.

So did he? Al-Awlaki is routinely described by the FBI and others as an al Qaeda supporter, and a fiery inciter of violence against infidels. And he was the imam at the Virginia mosque attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers, as well as Hasan. But while it's clear that Al-Awlaki is a bad guy, what's not clear is whether he's simply a propagandist or someone who actually operates as a part of al Qaeda. It's one thing for Hasan to have sent e-mails to someone who vocally supports al Qaeda, and quite another for him to have sent e-mails to al Qaeda itself, or to operatives actively involved in trying to kill people. Ross told us that, according to his sources, "Al-Awlaki is considered a recruiter," which is how he justified invoking the name of the terrorist network. We'll defer to him on that point.

But without knowing what the e-mails are about, can it really be known that Hasan's communications were "attempts to reach out"? The FBI didn't consider them as such. Ross didn't know the contents of the e-mails when he described them that way, but felt perfectly justified in doing so based solely on the knowledge that Hasan had sent the e-mails.

We asked Ross if he had tried to contact Al-Awlaki in reporting the story:

"Yes."

So you reached out to al Qaeda, then?

"To al Qaeda? No. I reached out to him. Oh. I see what you're saying."

With Iraq about to blow wide open, al-Sadr stepped in again.

MSNBC:

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday ordered his fighters off the streets nationwide and called on the government to stop raids against his followers and free them from prison. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a statement calling the order “a step in the right direction” towards resolving six days of violence sparked by operations against al-Sadr's backers in the oil-rich southern city of Basra.

But al-Maliki also acknowledged Saturday that he may have miscalculated by failing to foresee the strong backlash the offensive would provoke in Baghdad and other cities where Shiite militias wield power...read on

So who's in charge of Iraq at this point?

Editor&Publisher: Finally! The MSM will grudgingly report that St. McCain actively sought and accepted the endorsement of a couple old pals of the Bush White House. This minister is anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and wants war with Iran now. The sainted solon has dubbed the other radical cleric a "spiritual guide." Neither, however, is a scary black man.

The Largest Minority: Exxon loses Venezuelan asset freeze and ordered to pay compensation.

Shakesville: Women's and children's issues don't count

Danger Room: Counting the dead in Iraq

Voice Your Choice in the Corporate Hall of Shame 2008. This year's nominees made headlines for breaking the law, influencing elected officials, undermining democratic decision-making and outright endangering the environment and public health.

(Photo courtesy of British Army) CTV:

The head of the British army says he has personally decided Prince Harry will go to Iraq.

Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt told BBC News the decision will be kept under review, but says he hopes his statement will end media speculation on Harry's deployment.

The 22-year-old Prince's regiment, the Blues and Royals, is due to begin a six-month tour of duty in Iraq within weeks. British commanders had reportedly been reconsidering their decision to allow the prince to fight in Iraq.[..]

Meanwhile, the Guardian newspaper is reporting that Shiite militants have set up a special squad targeting Harry should he be posted to Iraq.

The British newspaper quoted a commander in the Mahdi Army -- the militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- as saying the group had informants inside British army bases who would tip them off about Harry's presence.

Normally, this is one of those quasi-celebrity stories that I could not care less about. But I think it's important to point out one thing: I don't know how the royal family feels about the occupation in Iraq, but it would have been no big thing for them to arrange for Harry to not be deployed. But they didn't.

So I put it out there to all those talking heads who are still cheerleading the war: The man third in line for the throne of England is willing to put his life on the line (with direct threats, I might add). When are we going to see the same sacrifice of those unwilling to question the President? When will Jenna and Barbara land in the Green Zone?

Yes, the story is a couple of days old, but we didn't have a chance to mention it before and I wanted to be sure to put it out there, since the American media is certainly not playing this up.

InTheNews:

An Italian judge has ordered that 31 people stand trial over the kidnapping of an Islamic cleric as part of the US policy of extraordinary rendition.

Virtually all of the 26 American suspects are thought to be present or former CIA agents, while the other five defendants are Italian nationals.

Prosecutors allege that Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr was abducted in Milan on February 17th 2003 and flown to Germany and then his native Egypt to be questioned over suspected terrorist involvement.

Critics say Mr Nasr, only recently released, was taken to Africa in order to be tortured.

The previously secret US practice of extraordinary rendition, employed at the height of the war on terror, saw terror suspects taken to countries with more relaxed laws on interrogation and torture.

Italian prime minister Romano Prodi has not yet decided whether to ask for the 26 American defendants to be extradited - a request almost certainly to be turned down - but under Italian law the trial can go ahead regardless.

In Iraq:

Two dozen Iraqi soldiers were killed in fierce street fighting with Shi'ite militiamen in the city of Diwaniya on Monday in some of the bloodiest clashes yet among rival factions in Shi'ite southern Iraq. Thirty seven people were killed, according to army, militia and medical sources. Five soldiers were posted missing in a battle officials said began late on Sunday when troops tried to detain men of the Mehdi Army militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed 13 policemen and wounded 62 other people outside the Interior Ministry, police said, in one of the deadliest attacks in the city since U.S. and Iraqi troops launched a big security clampdown three weeks ago

NY Times:

Up to 48 Iraqis were killed and 60 wounded in a brazen bomb and grenade attack in a town south of Baghdad this morning, Iraqi officials said. It was one of the highest death tolls from a single attack in months on victims believed to be mostly Shiites, and it prompted a walkout in Parliament today of members in the legislative bloc of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

CIA agents have been charged with kidnapping a cleric in Italy and taking him to a country where torture tactics can be used. Italian intelligence officials deny any prior knowledge of this CIA scandal. (David)

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We interupt the Charles and Camilla wedding to bring you a little news.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Tens of thousands of Shiites marked the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad with a protest against American troops at the same square where jubilant crowds toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein two years ago. The protesters back radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militiamen led uprisings last year against U.S. troops before signing truces with U.S.-led forces...read on

It's still not a bed of roses.