Fareed Zakaria Was Top Sunday News Show Again

The good and bad news from Fareed's interview with Israeli Amb. Michael Oren was that the Ambassador defended Israel's positions about as well as they can be defended.

On Iran, Fareed pressed Oren hard on the issue of whether Iran was not allowed to have a peaceful nuclear power capacity by the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They are. Oren's reply was that a normal state would be allowed to have nuclear power, but Iran's leaders have misbehaved so badly that they have forfeited their right to do so. The question is whether other countries, particularly Russia and China, would agree with Israel. Probably not, but it's a good argument. That brings up the mirror question of whether Israel should bring its nuclear program under the international monitoring of the NPT. On that issue or a related on about whether Israel has nuclear weapons, as I recall Oren begged off and did not really answer. He has some finely worded statement about Israel not being the first to introduce nuclear weapons, more or less a "no first use" statement, although I think he refused to characterize it as such.

Fareed also had a segment on the real meat of Hilary Clinton's trip to Africa, rather than just the 10 second sound-bite about not channeling Bill, or about the 2000 Florida presidential election mess. It just showed how poorly everyone else covered her trip. Poor Hilary gets no points for trying to help Africa. The news anchors could care less about people dying in Africa.

Anyway, kudos to Fareed.