Now that ex—U.S. envoy Joe Wilson has discredited himself as a laughingstock, some great and mysterious PR machine of the Bush—deranged Left appears to have supplanted him with Ed Peck, another ex—U.S. envoy who's now making the TV—talk show rounds in his place. American Thinker of course has been onto him most recently here, so I'm just adding a few additional details.

Peck got himself invited onto Fox News — to the nut slot, of course —  but he also made a longer appearance last week on far—left radio's Amy Goodman show, called Democracy Now!

Peck let his malevolent anti—Bush, anti—Israel perspective all hang out there, happily stressing to the rabid—left Amy that he was a Reagan—era official. Now, knowing who Amy Goodman is, that's a detail that ordinarily might give her the heaves, but in this case, pleased her mightily, since he was there to defend Hezbollah and express his inability to recognize terrorism, supposedly as a reasonable Reaganite. Peck said:

In 1985, when I was the Deputy Director of the Reagan White House Task Force on Terrorism, they asked us —— this is a Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism; I was the Deputy Director of the working group —— they asked us to come up with a definition of terrorism that could be used throughout the government. We produced about six, and each and every case, they were rejected, because careful reading would indicate that our own country had been involved in some of those activities.

Neither Amy nor Peck mentioned Peck's real roots, which were in the failed Carter administration — an omission that underlines the apparent propaganda aim of the entire radio appearance.

Peck described to Amy his meeting with Hezbollah supremo Hassan Nasrallah, describing the Hezbollah terror leader in this sunny way:

You know, just an educated intelligent man talking about serious issues that he perceived. It was interesting in the sense that the projection of people like that in this country is of, you know, blood—soaked wackos, and there are some of those out there on all sides, but that certainly was not the case with him. He believes very strongly in what he's doing, which is something that you want to think about as you deal with him, because he is intent on accomplishing the objectives that he believes are the right ones. 

Peck certainly was taken. Continuing his propaganda offensive, Peck stressed that Nasrallah was an old hand at hostage—taking and swapping, so Israel's supposedly out of proportion response to destroy Hezbollah was really just Israel unreasonably moving the goalposts regarding Islamofascist kidnappings and human bargaining chips, something Nasrallah — a reasonable man, mind you — couldn't be expected to anticipate. Hostage taking and swapping were what he'd always done, so Israel was the one being unreasonable about it with its new assertive response to it. Besides that, Peck covered all the bases by actually adding the claim that Israel had done the kidnapping in the first place anyway.

He also blathered on in more moral blurring in this passage here, trying to explain that the U.S. and Israel were the "real terrorist" states in this discussion of terrorism here:

Yes, well, certainly, you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in such activities. Ours is one of them. Israel is another. And so, the terrorist, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. And I think it's useful for people who discuss that phrase to remember that Israel was founded by terrorist organizations and terrorist leaders, Menachem Begin, who became statesmen and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And Nasrallah may not be the same kind of guy, but his intentions are the same. He wants to free his country from domination by another.

Peck then moved on to his real agenda, which was to claim that the U.S. was in the throes of the "Israeli lobby." He stressed that uneducated people like the Arabs couldn't understand all of this. But he couldn't conceal his snobbery, either. He had just earlier stressed that Nasrallah was an "educated" man, and obviously someone he enjoyed flattering. If Nasrallah represented the same uneducated Arabs who couldn't understand things, the same ones he suggested that we all make allowances for, it's a direct contradiction to his claims about Nasrallah's "education." After all, if Nasrallah was educated, surely he'd be able to understand things, right? Peck revealed himself to be a suckup — and probably to a lot of people.

Let's go back to that Gaza trip of Peck's. Peck said it had been sponsored a Washington lobby called "The Council for the National Interest." A look at its site reveals that its mission is to "balance" (read: neutralize) U.S. policy on the Middle East, particularly with regard to Israel. It's an organization which is focused exclusively on stopping the "Israeli lobby" and along with Peck, it has some pretty gamy members. One of them seems to deny the Holocaust and another has very strange interpretations about the 1993 World Trade Center bombers as well as steaming admiration for Hamas. 

Check out that background next time you see Peck on TV or radio. With the way he's making himself known, it's useful to know who his friends and Gaza—trip sponsors are.

A.M. Mora y Leon 07 30 06