Best of the Web?

Someone wrote to tell me that the Al Sharpton photo I just linked to was cited earlier today in James Taranto's Best of the Web. So I wandered over there to check it out, and found this alarming headline: "Mandela Backs 'Holocaust.'"

Wow. What had Nelson Mandela said? I quote Taranto:

"It is a tragedy what is happening, what Bush is doing in Iraq," Mandela said in a speech today in Johannesburg, South Africa. "What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."

But according to Reuters, Mandela also "said he would support without reservation any action agreed upon by the United Nations against Iraq."

So it seems Mandela is all for a "holocaust"–provided the French and Germans approve.

Taranto's concluding crack would make sense if Mandela had declared that any invasion of Iraq would constitute a holocaust. What he actually said, you'll note, is that action by "one power" (i.e., the United States) could plunge the world into a holocaust, but that action by the United Nations would not.

There's plenty of legitimate criticisms you can make of this position, but none of them bear any resemblance to what Taranto wrote, and none of them justify his inflammatory headline.