The appalling judgement of Register at al-Hurra

Joel Mowbray:

To understand the challenge faced by Al-Hurra, the U.S. taxpayer-financed Arabic TV network, consider the case of Yasser Thabet. For years, Mr. Thabet has been a leading figure in shaping news coverage in the region. Whereas fawning over terrorists would be career suicide in the United States, Mr. Thabet, formerly a broadcast editor at Al-Jazeera, did just that--and promptly landed a top position at a major Arab media outlet.

Last summer, Mr. Thabet wrote a loving tribute on his personal Web site to Soha Bechara, a woman who attempted to assassinate a general of the main anti-Hezbollah forces, the South Lebanese Army. Calling her "a living symbol of Lebanese resistance," he encouraged "those who are unfairly and unjustly detained in our Arab World" to take solace from her example, including Tayssir Allouni, the former Al-Jazeera reporter who was convicted by a Spanish court in 2005 of passing money between al Qaeda and an affiliated cell in Spain.

After the execution of Saddam Hussein, Mr. Thabet unleashed a vitriolic attack on Iraqi Shiites, whom he called "a group of murderers." Lamenting that "the execution of Saddam was a political and historical mistake," Mr. Thabet wrote fondly about how the "corpse" of Saddam had managed "to incite its people to retaliate and resist."

A few months later, in March of this year, Mr. Thabet was hired as chief editor of news by Al-Hurra. His employment is just one of a number of recent controversies surrounding the network since the appointment of longtime CNN producer Larry Register as its news director last November.

Internal Al-Hurra memos and emails show that Mr. Register was directly responsible for most of the broadcasts--which provided platforms to Holocaust deniers and Islamic terrorists--that have angered lawmakers. The network's oversight panel and the U.S. State Department have nevertheless maintained that the news director's actions on these matters were just "mistakes." But when Mr. Register hired Mr. Thabet, he knew exactly what he was getting.

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Register has taken over a government sponsored network that was suppose to counter enemy propaganda and has instead embraced it. He is doing the opposite of what was intended and is not engaging the enemy in the media battle space. Instead, he is aiding their logistic operations in that battle space. In our war with the Islamist religious bigots, the one area where they are winning is in the media battle space. Turning al-Hurra into another blast cannon for enemy propaganda is just appalling bad judgment at best. He should be terminated. We need to put someone in charge of this operation who has run a campaign war room and rapid response team. James Carville certainly handled that job well for Clinton. If he were willing to support our war effort, he certainly has the talent for responding. Karl Rove would be an even better choice.