http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11324/pub_detail.asp
Savvy political propagandists normally adhere to the “believability rule” when spinning agitprop, but some newcomers to the art of “spincraft” abandon even the appearance of credibility. Such is the case with Brooke Anderson of Beirut’s The Daily Star. Her hatchet piece, “The right-wing Lebanese Christian advising Romney on the Middle East,” attempts to sully one of Lebanon’s most celebrated and accomplished sons, Lebanese-American professor, Dr. Walid Phares.
The venom of Anderson’s diatribe is unrivaled in Lebanese media and beneath The Daily Star. She besmirches the entire Republican Presidential field, but her primary target is Walid Phares, Mitt Romney’s senior policy advisor on the Middle East. As I endured Anderson’s piece, I found myself asking, “Why would a prominent newspaper like the Star publish a canard entered by an inexperienced political hack who gerrymandered fossilized Lebanese news into current US political goings-on to try and assassinate the reputation of a man whose credibility dwarfs her own?” Granted, Anderson lives in Beirut and writes stories for the Star’s local entertainment section, but she brings no personal experience or knowledge of Lebanese history to the country’s enduring civil debate.
Anderson’s motive for the piece is transparent. She and her jihadist collaborators in cyberspace hope that demonizing Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney will shame the former Governor into reversing Phares’ appointment. Their vilification of Dr. Phares’ role in Lebanon’s policy debate during the Pearl of the Mediterranean’s fifteen-year civil war is contrived and unconvincing. She and her fellow conspirators may hoodwink one or two unwitting American readers by regurgitating old myths crafted by Iranian and jihadist lobby groups in the US, but they will not sway the loyal citizens of Lebanon.