The other news

Over the last few weeks, Reuters has been running deceptively-worded stories suggesting that bellicose statements from Iran, Syria and Lebanon are simply "warnings" to Israel not to launch military strikes against them.  As we noted here, these stories represent a transparent attempt by Reuters to paint Israel as the belligerent in the region and to portray the Arab and Islamic states as rational and reasonable actors fending off aggression.

As war rhetoric from the terror troika heats up, Reuters' flimsy editorial position is becoming increasingly risible but that doesn't prevent the agency from continued efforts to sanitize or to simply ignore palpable threats of genocide.  At a joint news conference:

The presidents of Iran and Syria on Thursday ridiculed U.S. policy in the region and pledged to create a Middle East "without Zionists," combining a slap at recent U.S. overtures and a threat to Israel with an endorsement of one of the region's defining alliances... Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier, spoke of Israel's eventual "demise and annihilation" and said the countries of the region could create a future "without Zionists and without colonialists."  

Those quotes are from a story appearing in the Washington Post.  Reuters correspondents, who covered the same news conference here, apparently had their translating earpieces switched off at the time.

Reuters' editorial slant on this issue becomes easier to fathom when one considers that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's view of "Zionists and colonialists" is shared by Reuters Bureau Chief, Alastair Macdonald.