Surprise: Times Reporter Calls Hezbollah a Terrorist Group
There must have been an editorial slip-up (or else Executive Editor Bill Keller is still jet-lagged from his trip to Iran)for the paper's Pentagon reporter Thom Shanker actually called Hezbollah a terrorist group in Tuesday's "Pentagon to Outline Shift In War Planning Strategy."
In preparing to adopt concepts of hybrid warfare, the Defense Department has closely studied Israel's last war in Lebanon in 2006, when a terrorist group, Hezbollah, fielded high-tech weapons equal to any nation's, including long-range missiles. Likewise, when a traditional military power like Russia went to war with the former Soviet republic of Georgia last August, its tanks, paratroopers and warships were preceded by crippling computer network attacks.
That might be a no-no at the Times, according to Keller himself, who recently termed it "sloppy journalism" to call the anti-Israel Palestinian terrorist group Hamas a terrorist organization. Presumably he feels the same about the Lebanon-based anti-Israel terrorist group Hezbollah.
