>But king of idiocy goes to peter jennings who (eaming with pride)
>said that Richard Engel was a real asset to have reportiong from
>Iraq because he spoke arabic and, after all, not many people speak
>arabic...if you missed that gem, I shit you not.
To be fair to Jennings, he probably meant that few American reporters speak Arabic, not that few people in the world speak it. Which is the scandal of most U.S. reporters abroad - they barely speak the language of the target country (even in Canada, probably!), and rely on secretaries and the U.S. embassy to do their work for them.
Doug