Orange juice and US policies

A Western graduate student of the Middle East sent me this from Lebanon (I cite with his/her permission): "Another interesting event was a cocktail reception they held for our group with US Embassy officials in attendance. A colleague of mine and I (both Arabic graduates) were talking to this American diplomat who told us there was 'no such thing as the Arabic language' because of the existence of dialects (said in a very arrogant fashion). He had worked in Mosul and Tunisia before this. He then ordered orange juice in the worst Arabic I have ever heard - the waiter looked at him as if he had spoken in martian language, which he may as well have done. Somehow we began talking about the bla bla Hariri tribunal (Omar Nashabe had given us a brilliant lecture on it the night before) and when we said that many decisions taken had been unconstitutional because of the withdrawl of Amal and Hizballah from the parliament he responded by saying that was nonsense - he said 'so if the Tories pulled out of the House of Commons does that make a Labour government constitutional? Incredible. He also said that An-Nahar is the New York Times of Lebanon but that 'there was no sense of American style
objectivity in the Lebanese press' - he said Al Akhbar was nothing but a tabloid - clearly no clue whatsoever. He then said his wife ran an NGO for journalists who had been unfairly arrested - when I asked if this NGO had done anything for sami al hajj in the 6 years he was held at guantanamo or for the Iraqi journalists incarcerated by the US without trial he responded by saying the organisation dealt with cases you don't hear about in the media.' My colleague and I said we needed to go to get drinks, even though our glasses were still full. I suppose these characters are the legacy of Jeffrey Feltman, the 'Sons of Feltman' if you will."