[Click the picture to see the entire front page.]

That's the front page image on today's Boston Globe that accompanies the article describing yesterday's horrific car-bombings in Najaf and Karbala, as well as the ambush of Iraqi election workers in Baghdad.

I post it for the irony factor, in so far as Al-Manar was just this Friday placed on the Terrorist Exclusion List and banned in the United States on Friday.

A conspiracy theorist could have good time with that image. They always say Al Jazeera is just coincidentally in the right place at the right time, now here's terror mouthpiece Al Manar. Of course, Hizballah (which runs Al Manar) is Shi'ite, so why would they be complicit in this - but Hizballah is backed by Iran, which has its own reasons for wanting chaos in Iraq right now and many of its security operatives are Sunni Palestinians.

Obviously, this speculation is just that - and based on a single screen-shot - so take it for what it's worth, which is probably very little.

But I was still intrigued to see the words "AL Manar Exclusive" on the front page of my morning paper. This is a particularly obvious example, but just imagine how much text and photo journalism comes to us through our mainstream, Western news sources that had its origin with terror mouthpieces and their supporters. Quite a bit of it in the Middle East - whether from the terror regimes themselves or more "responsible" agents too afraid for their lives or their access to cross them.