NPR on the Iraqi Elections

It was like I was living out an episode of The Twilight Zone Sunday afternoon. I had been listening to a concert broadcast on our local NPR station and wasn't really paying attention as the music ended. Suddenly my head began to ache and my ears to throb, and I realized I had unwittingly allowed myself to hear the opening strains of All Things Considered, National Public Radio's extremely liberal version of the news.

But as I reached desperately for the safety of the radio dial ... I almost fainted in surprise at one of the quotes of the first story, a report on the upcoming elections in Iraq for a new full-term parliament, the beginnings of the new democratically elected government under the new Iraqi constitution. Reporter Debbie Elliott was interviewing several Iraqi expatriates currently living in the United States but voting absentee in the election. One of these was a young Iraqi woman named Babylonia Marcus, an Iraqi Christian, who voiced the following sentiments:

"...[A]s my mom says, 'Every time we vote, we put a dagger in Saddam's heart and a dagger in the insurgents' hearts.'"

I still can't believe such a statement actually made it into a broadcast report from NPR. In fact, all in all this particular report was fairly well-done, without the usual liberal rants so often associated with anything produced by NPR. Of course, I didn't press my luck. I quickly switched the radio over to something a little less dangerous before my ears had a chance to start bleeding...