If you've read any al-Jazeera online stories or seen any video, you know that the Qatar-based media is laughably - comically - anti-American. Even smart Arabs don't take AJ's "news" stories without a large dollop of skepticism. They are unashamedly agenda-driven - far more than any American network, and that's saying a lot.So why is AJ popular with some of the president's aides? Seven years after then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the broadcaster's reporting "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable" and President George W. Bush joked about bombing it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised it as "real news" in her recent Senate testimony.Not only that, her staffers, as well as those of the CIA and the Obama White House, were attending the Congressional Correspondents' Dinner as Al-Jazeera's guests."They are a really important media entity, and we have a really great relationship with them," said Dana Shell Smith, the State...(Read Full Post)