LATimes Once Again Defies Logic

The LATimes supports gun control, but it says the following in an editorial lambasting those who lambast Newsweek for shoddy reporting:

Contrary to the impression you might get by following the story in the U.S. media, the riots were not about the journalists' use of anonymous sources. They were about perceived American contempt for the faith, the culture and ultimately the lives of Muslim Arabs and other dark-skinned people in distant lands.

Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Journalists don't kill people; people kill people.

The LAT then went on to say something both funny and hopelessly lost:

Where did The Times' editorial page get the idea that winning the war on terrorism depends on persuading societies that breed terrorists that they should like us and adopt our values? Actually, this is not some wooly left-wing notion concocted over a joint during a lesbian wedding reception in Santa Monica. It is the cornerstone of the George Bush presidency, according to Bush himself.

In his State of the Union address in January, for instance, Bush said, "In the long term, the peace we seek will only be achieved by eliminating the conditions that feed radicalism and ideologies of murder. If whole regions of the world remain in despair and grow in hatred, they will be the recruiting grounds for terror, and that terror will stalk America…."

We like the self-depreciating acknowledgment of the LAT's liberal bias in the first paragraph, but there's something dreadfully wrong with their interpretation of the second paragraph. When the President said it, he was saying that radicalism and hatred grew out of authoritarian, repressive states. The LAT thought they heard him say it grew out of America.