A Poor Choice of Words

More news of The Cartoon War

From MSNBC [emphasis added]:

Seeking to diffuse the uproar, Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with ambassadors from 70 countries, including Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Lebanon.

Egyptian Ambassador Mona Omar Attia said afterward that the Danish leader’s response was inadequate and that the country should do more to “appease the whole Muslim world.”

Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, what passes for a moderate in Islam, almost gets it:

“We strongly denounce and condemn this horrific action,” al-Sistani said, alluding to the caricatures in remarks posted on his Web site and dated Jan. 31.

But al-Sistani, who wields enormous influence over Iraq’s majority Shiites, also referred to “misguided and oppressive” segments of the Muslim community and said their actions “projected a distorted and dark image of the faith of justice, love and brotherhood.”

“Enemies have exploited this ... to spread their poison and revive their old hatreds with new methods and mechanisms,” he said of the cartoons.