Posted on 09/25/2007 7:05:49 AM PDT by 3AngelaD
"For hundreds of years, we've lived in friendship and brotherhood with the people of Iraq," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the National Press Club yesterday. That's true -- as long as you don't count the little unpleasantness of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, when a million people died, some by poison gas. And you'd also have to overlook 500 years of fighting during the Ottoman Empire. But never mind that: Ahmadinejad was on a roll.
"Our people are the freest people in the world," said the man whose government executes dissidents, jails academics and stones people to death....And if you believe that, he has a peaceful civilian nuclear program he wants to sell you...
"Don't give him any press!" shouted one woman. But that objection misses a crucial point: Without listening to Ahmadinejad, how can the world appreciate how truly nutty he is?
"In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country," he informed the Columbia audience. It takes time to come up with profound thoughts such as that...
Ahmadinejad, wearing open collar and glasses, lost his audience at the press club almost immediately. After only one sentence of his speech, the translator stopped translating. "The president is reciting verses from the holy Koran in Arabic," she explained. Completing his verses, he launched into 20 minutes of cheap sentiment.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
IMHO, we are making the same types of mistakes with this tyrant. He has told us straight up what he intends. He should have been arrested and put away the second he set foot on our soil. He has the blood of our sons and daughters, and countelss others, already on his hands.
The issue is not what the civilized world thinks of him...we already have, with our free flow of informationa ndhis own speeches elsewhere, ample evidence against him from his own mouth.
The issue is what he does with the platform and credibility we lent him by officially giving him a visa and allowing him here...what he does with that amongst the controlled and ignorant masses in his part of the world. He will use this visit to justify and lend credence to himself...and sign up many, many more to his rabid cause. The price of that, will be measured in all the more American blood in the months, and perhaps years, ahead.
I bet the press felt like they were listening to Hillary.
“Ahmadinejad is not ignorant. He is a madman...but so was Hitler...and it took six years of prime time and millions of lives to put him down.”
Ahmadinejad is just a backwater Iranian yokel propped up by the Ayatollahs. Kudos to Milbank for so succintly illustrating just how insane he is.
From the article:
“In our country,” judged the man who shuts down newspapers and imprisons journalists, “freedom is flowing at its highest level.”
I’d say the only thing “flowing” is bs.
Dana Milbank’s writing style is one of acerbic sarcasm. Today, that’s good because he’s decided to write about Ahmanutjob, but Milbank wrote an article a few weeks back about Tony Snow that really pissed me off.
"The freest women in the world are women in Iran,"
Hmmm...Then why did you stone an 18 year old girl over the weekend for "promiscuous behavior"? Why can't women drive a car? Why can't Iranians worship freely in a Christian church?
Free? Really? By what standards...the Koran? If this is the best Iran has to offer in terms of a public servant, they need to look under another rock.
Yes, Milbank is an amoral nasty piece of work on a daily basis, banal, third-rate, and I usually skip him. But I thought this, in its entirety, was really good.
I think Milbank had the perfect material to work with for this piece. Only a total moron could screw it up.
I do not give him any personal respect...but I do respect his position to do us great harm. To label him as a backwater yokel, and, "ignorant", is to make light of something that is, IMHO, mortally dangerous.
IMHO, he is as dangerous as Hitler was...and maginalizing Hitler for far too long led to the deaths of millions. The same will occur here unless we face what Ahmadinejad is, what power to do us harm he has...and his stated intention and determination of doing so...and do something forth right and direct about it.
Just my opinon on the matter.
>>“In our country,” judged the man who shuts down newspapers and imprisons journalists, “freedom is flowing at its highest level.”<<
ISLAM MAKES PEOPLE INSANE.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/amcleese/2007/09/19/insanity-in-iran-dog-walking-banned/
They all talk like Baghdad Bob.
We’re past jaw jaw, though. At least after Beslan, I am.
I think it is clear, after yesterday, that he is not very smart and not very articulate, and an abysmal debater. He has been living in a challenge-free, criticism-free bubble, and yesterday it burst. I agree with you that Iran, under its current masters, has the potential to do great harm. But I would remind everyone that Ahmadinejad himself is little more than a sock puppet, and not a very presentable one, for the Imams who actually run Iran, who have the evil intentions, and who control Iran’s nukes. Ahmadinejad’s intentions are evil, too, but I seriously doubt, on his own, he could be effectively evil, given this demonstration. If this is the best Iran has to offer, it should be ashamed. I think the Imams made a huge miscalculation in allowing him to leave the country and go public. As an advocate for his regime’s positions and goals, he was a complete failure. The Emperor not only has no clothes, he has no decent talking points.
LOL. It’s no secret Islam doesn’t like dogs, or women, or homosexuals, or journalists, or college professors, or soccer players, or people who wear Yankees hats....
Who do they like again?
Hitler was able to consolidate a massive amount of political power in Nazi Germany and had the military capabilities to challegne the world powers at the time. Plus, he had a cult of personality and a propaganda machine that silenced all opposition and built up a fever-pitched nationalism.
Ahmadinejad has absolutely no power whatsoever. He’s a brainless party hack that Khamenei stuck into the presidential seat after Khatami opened some cracks in Iran’s authoritarian armor. Iran can only boast and talk big because, like North Korea, they can never reach military parity with the likes of the United States or even China. Add to that Iran’s terrible economy, repressed and hostile middle class and youth and their inability to become a major powerbroker in their own neck of the woods (the Middle East) and I don’t think we even have a close match to Hitler.
Ahmadinejad is an awful, evil dude, but the Hitler comparison just doesn’t fly.
“I think it is clear, after yesterday, that he is not very smart and not very articulate, and an abysmal debater. He has been living in a challenge-free, criticism-free bubble, and yesterday it burst.”
This is EXACTLY why, unlike 99% of the country, I wanted him to speak at Columbia. Of course he’d come off like a complete effin’ moron. Of course that bubble would burst. If anything, we should welcome idiots like him to speak here just so we can rip him a new one and show him what a real open society is like. You know, where we can challenge politicians without getting our families disappeared or our balls cut off.
They are effective at it too in that part of the world, irrespective of what we perceive as his lack of capability. You see, it is really not about what we think (except in so far as he can continue to get moonbats to run intertference for him here), it is about what the people over in that part of the world think about what he did here yesterday and today.
And, if they obtain nuclear weapons, then they will have the military capability, and the fanatical will, to cause death and destruction on the same scale in a much shoirter time frame.
For those reasons, and because there are so many who want to "dialogue" with the madman, the comparison to Hitler and the danger he posed do indeed fly.
“Sorry, there is a cult of evil, dedicated people backing him, just as there were with Hitler.”
Obviously, there is an overarching cult of evil. My point is, he’s not leading them and they’re not listening to him. Ahmadinejad is fringe even in his own Shia sect, and Sunni groups like al Qaeda would probably string him up given the chance. No offense, but you have the same problem as a lot of my fellow conservatives when discussing Islam, terrorism and the ongoing fight - glossing over the details is dangerous to the overall fight to defeat Islamic terrorism, as there are multiple dimensions to the fight and varying avenues for attack.
“it is about what the people over in that part of the world think about what he did here yesterday and today.”
They’re getting fed the same propaganda whether he’s here or not.
“And, if they obtain nuclear weapons, then they will have the military capability, and the fanatical will, to cause death and destruction on the same scale in a much shoirter time frame.”
No, they’ll have a tiny bargaining chip and about 10,000 ICBMs pointed at their front door. The great thing about state-sponsored lunacy (Iran) is that they tend to care more about their own little fiefdom of power than the One True Cause (a la al Qaeda). As irrational (read: insane)as Ahmadinejad is, his finger is not on the trigger and the Ayatollah’s don’t want to give up their authoritarian Islam state.
But, as some other posters have pointed out, it’s not really important what we think, it’s more important how this will be played out in Iran. The spinmeisters will weave this show into a propaganda tool at home - guaranteed. Just mho.
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