Reuters sensationalizes Ahmadinejad quote

Matt Drudge blares "COUNTDOWN TO ISRAEL'S END" with a picture of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  The Reuters story to which Drudge links is headlined "Iran president sees 'countdown' to Israel's end".  So, Ahmadinejad is threatening Israel with nukes, right?  Nope.  Allow me to fisk the first four paragraphs of the Reuters piece:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's president said on Sunday the Lebanese and the Palestinians had pressed a "countdown button" to bring an end to Israel.

Wrong.  He said -- according to the third paragraph in this very article! -- that such a button had been pushed for the destruction of the "Zionist regime".  I would uncontroversially submit that the destruction of a regime -- call it "regime change", if you like -- is not the same as the end of the country it governs.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who triggered outrage in the West two years ago when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map", has often referred to the destruction of the Jewish state but says Iran is not a threat.

The anonymous Reuters reporter (possibly some sort of Iran expert?) may be unfamiliar with the months-old essay in which Arash Norouzi argues that the "wiped off the map" line was a dangerous misreporting of an irresponsible mistranslation, i.e., that Ahmadinejad never said that either.  (Part of the confusion then was also the distinction between a regime and a country.)

"With God's help, the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed by the hands of the children of Lebanon and Palestine," Ahmadinejad said in a speech.

"By God's will, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future," he said.  He did not elaborate.

How hard would it be to grab a George W. Bush quote out of context, ominously to append that "he did not elaborate", and endlessly to repeat it to a foreign mass audience, thus "proving" that Bush is some sort of evil monster?  (Wait, don't answer that.)  So I have to ask:  Why is this "news" about Ahmadinejad being tidily repackaged and pumped out to Americans?