...There was no hatred toward Americans." What a howling falsehood. Arab regimes have been inciting hatred toward Americans for years, and few have done so more consistently than the thuggish autocracy of Mubarak, who has ruled for 23 years.

For example, it was Al-Ahram, a newspaper controlled by the Egyptian government, that claimed in October that US pilots flying over Afghanistan were dropping "genetically treated" food into areas booby-trapped with land mines, in the hope not only of making Afghans sick but of crippling or killing those who attempt to gather the food. It was Al-Akhbar, another regime-sponsored daily, that declared in August: "The Statue of Liberty . . . must be destroyed because of the idiotic American policy that goes from disgrace to disgrace in the swamp of bias and blind fanaticism. . . . The age of the American collapse has begun."

Examples of the anger engendered by the Iraq war? Hardly. Al-Ahram and Al-Akhbar published those statements in October and August of 2001...