Left I on the News

AP is out with a "fact check" of some of the inane statements being made by the right-wing about the "Ground Zero mosque" (not at Ground Zero, not a mosque). One of the accusations is that the imam associated with the center is a "radical." And why?

"He's devoted much of his career to working closely with Christians, Jews and secular leaders to advance interfaith understanding. He's scolded his own religion for being in some ways in the "Dark Ages." Yet he's also accused the U.S. of spilling more innocent blood than al-Qaida."

"Accused"? Not to fact check the fact check, but wouldn't "noted that" be more factual than "accused"? That the U.S. has spilled more innocent blood than al Quida many times over is simple fact, and we don't even need to throw in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to prove the "accusation."

We're also told that

"he's made provocative statements about America, too, calling it an "accessory" to the 9/11 attacks and attributing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children to the U.S.-led sanctions in the years before the invasion."

Well, whether the U.S. was an "accessory" to 9/11 is clearly a subjective opinion, but that the deaths of a half million Iraqi children was caused by the U.S.-led sanctions is again, simple fact, acknowledged by no less than the then-U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright.

Facts are stubborn things. Also, evidently, "provocative."