Opinion: I knew him back when he was a fresh-faced terrorist-turned-politician

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This morning the editorial board gave one-and-a-half cheers to the durability of Fouad Siniora’s government in Lebanan, which has so far weathered a full-court press from Hezbollah and its fellow travelers. For an added perspective on the Party of God and its ambitions in Lebanon and beyond, here’s an interview I did with Mohammed Fneish, Hezbollah’s member of parliament from Bint Jbeil. Fneish has since moved up in the world and is now Lebanon’s minister of energy. He seemed likable enough, made some effort to answer my actual questions rather than giving pure boilerplate, and was soft-spoken to a dictaphone-baffling fault, but my confidence that Hezbollah can ever be integrated peacefully into the Lebanese political scene has diminished sharply in the years since that interview.