There are lots of Helen Thomas's out there

CNN Editor Fired for Saying She Has "Respect" for Hezbollah Cleric

BY John McCormack

Mediaite reports that CNN has fired senior editor of Middle East affairs Octavia Nasr. As Daniel Halper pointed out the other day, Nasr wrote on Twitter on July 4 that she was "sad" to hear of the death of Hezbollah's Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah--a man for whom she has "respect." Fadlallah had justified suicide bombings, is believed to be responsible for the Marine barracks bombing, and had said that "Zionism has inflated the number of victims in this Holocaust beyond imagination."

In a followup blog post last night, Nasr wrote that it "was an error of judgment for me to write such a simplistic comment and I'm sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah's life's work. That's not the case at all."

She explained that she knew about all the wicked aspects of Fadlallah's life--saying she even "lost family members" in the barracks bombing--and was simply referring to the fact that she respected Fadlallah for his opposition to "honor" killings and beating women. But saying you respect Fadlallah for opposing murdering and beating (Muslim) women is almost like saying you respect Osama bin Laden for building day care centers.

CNN doesn't think Nasr's apology makes up for what she said. "We believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward," Nasr's CNN superior Parisa Khosravi said in a statement.