It's hard to feel sanguine about winning the battle for "hearts and minds" in the Arab world when so many of those minds are addled with this kind of paranoid poison:

"I claim that since the events of 9/11, which were created by Sharon and Bush - the two of them shared a secret. This secret caused the U.S... Therefore, when Sharon had [a stroke], I believe that Bush was very relieved, and the thing he fears is that Sharon will regain consciousness, because Sharon is bold, and he might expose Bush. That is why all the reports... There was an important report, for example, published by Congress following a long investigation, but it did not answer the question: Who carried out 9/11?"

That quote isn't from some garden variety, Muslim man on the street. According to MEMRI, it's from Dr. Abdallah Al-Ash'al, former deputy foreign minister of Egypt - a country considered one of our allies in the region and the recipient of more than a billion dollars in US foreign aid annually - who is now a professor of international law and political science at the American University in Cairo.