Out of Africa

This is an unpublished letter to the Washington Examiner, a right wing newspaper that never tires of attacking President Obama and never allows the facts to interfere with its overzealousness:

In the editorial criticizing President Obama for failure to call for madman Moammar Gaddafi’s removal (an omission subsequently overtaken by events), you write that the dictator “has used mercenaries from Africa and Libyan soldiers still loyal to him to slaughter demonstrators in street.” For your edification, Libya, like neighboring Tunisia, Egypt, and Algeria, is located in the continent of Africa; so, if it matters to be perceived as having a rudimentary knowledge of geography, it should have been read “mercenaries from other African nations.”

I