CHRIS HEDGES? Chris Hedges! I knew that name rang a bell. Mind Over What Matters was on this guy's case back in October 2001, when this blog was very young, and Hedges was claiming that Israeli soldiers were being allowed to shoot Pali children -- "for sport!"

Those were his exact words. I transcribed his deranged tirade myself from -- where else? -- NPR's archived streaming audio interview:

"I watched the solidiers open fire, and it was -- I mean, I've seen kids shot in Sarajevo ... the snipers would shoot kids in Sarajevo... I've seen death squads kill families in Algeria and El Salvador ... but I've never seen soldiers bait or taunt kids like this, and then shoot them for sport!"

At the time, I also mentioned that Chris Hedges -- whose prior claim to fame was having been among the group of forty reporters captured and detained by Iraqi soldiers at the end of the First Gulf War -- has quite a well-documented track record for factual error, tactical ommission, careless research and wholesale disregard for the truth. No wonder the New York Times loves this guy.