Symptomatic of a much broader and more profound failure of comprehension.

As Al Franken says, before you drag your country to war, do your fucking homework. But the criminal fools in the republican party couldn't be bothered.

According to critics, the U.S. government miscalculated in assuming that al-Hurra could repeat the success of Radio Free Europe during the Cold War, when information-starved listeners behind the Iron Curtain tuned in on their shortwave radios.

Al-Hurra, by contrast, faces cutthroat competition. About 200 other stations beam Arabic-language programming to satellite dishes reaching even the poorest neighborhoods in the Middle East and North Africa. More rivals loom, including an Arabic-language news channel that the BBC is set to launch this year.