Steyn!

Haven't had a good Steyn quote for a while, but here he is reminding us that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar:

Before the body was found, The Independent's Robert Fisk offered a familiar argument to Pearl's kidnappers: Killing him would be "a major blunder... the best way of ensuring that the suffering" – of Kashmiris, Afghans, Palestinians – "goes unrecorded." Other journalists peddled a similar line: if you release Danny, he'll be able to tell your story, get your message out, "bridge the misconceptions." But the story did get out; the severed head is the message; the only misconception is that that's a misconception.

Well, quite. A lot of liberal babbling at the moment reminds me of Len Deighton's line about Chamberlain deciding to deal with Hitler as though he was a civilised man, since he had no idea how to deal with him if he was not.