Andrew – I’m sorry, but I can see the argument that the US government needs to distance itself from the Yassin assasination. In fact, I think there’s considerable merit to that case. But if you think it’s “well put” or a good idea to compare Yassin to Leon Klinghoffer I think you’re way, way, off base. I would very much like to know how that comparison is well put. Klinghoffer was nothing more than an old Jewish man on a cruise. Sheik Yassin was the mastermind of vicious mass-murder. Is there something — anything — beyond the apparatus of a wheel chair that makes you think that the two men are similar? If Osama Bin Laden is in a wheelchair when we bomb him, would he be like Leon Klinghoffer too when we kill him? If Stalin was in a wheelchair, does that make him an innocent victim? What strange alchemy does a wheel chair work on a man’s soul to absolve him of his crimes?

It’s one thing to acknowledge the ass-backwards morality and logic that plagues much of the Middle East and deal with it as a reality, it’s another thing to say that the US government should ape that logic. That strikes me as indefensible.