The myth of Iran's president calling for "wiping Israel off the map"...

[LynnTheDem]

The UK and Canada, among other nations, have exposed the fact that this is, in fact, a myth; that in fact Iran's President Ahmadinejad did NOT call for "wiping Israel off the map", and that in fact he is not "a madman" (you really would think the vast majority of Americans would have learned already, having been duped so often in the past about them "madmen", but apparently not.)

So...has any US "media" bothered yet to expose the myth and print the fact?

Just wondering.

[pooja]

1. Do you have a link?

[cynatnite]

2. I don't think the guy is a madman...

but I do believe he is as extremist as our own insane georgie.

[Toots]

26. Oh? What countries has he attacked?

Talk is cheap but action is the proof of the pudding. Bush* has invaded at least three foreign countries to fight "terra". Name one country Iran has attacked in the last Century, Remember Iraq attacked them, they did not attack Iraq. Same thing goes for North Korea. Name one country they have attacked since 1950. Now name the ones America has attacked. Which one has attacked more nations?

[jobycom]

3. It has been printed, along with the truth about his "Holocaust myth" quote

But both seem to have been printed rather small and not very near the front page. Most people even on DU have bought the "Ahmadinejad is a madman line." As you say, you'd think everyone would have learned better.

[BlooInBloo]

4. Well there ya go! Lynnthedem said it - case closed! LOL!

Why don't DUers care about proof - I'll never understand that.

I believe that wipe-Israel line was put forward as a direct quote. If you assert that's a lie, the burden is on you to demonstrate the assertion with evidence.

Note: I'm not taking any stand on whether or not the alleged quote is fabricated. I just ask that someone who IS taking a stand on the question provide evidence.

[LynnTheDem]

9. It was a quote (in Farsi). But not from Ahmadinejad.

"this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time"

That was a statement from someone else that President Ahmadinejad was quoting to point out a fact.

Who was he quoting?

US's good buddy & installed dictator, the Shah Ayatollah Komeini.

Juan Cole;

"Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope -- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government. Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that 'Israel must be wiped off the map' with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time."
http://www.albionmonitor.com/0605a/iranmisquote.html

Lots of Canadian & Brit links. ot too many US ones I can find. Wonder why.

[struggle4progress]

19. That's not much comfort: Ayatollah Khomeini was a real wacko.

Although hostility towards Shah Pahlevi was natural and understandable, and although the overthrow of the Shah and the resulting strain in US-Iranian relations should be understood (at least in part) as blowback associated with US policy dating back to the 1954 coup that installed the Shah, the Islamic Republic next established under Ayatollah Khomeini immediately exhibited fundamentalist and totalitarian features, which is unsurprising, since
Khomeini was an intolerant extremist.

When Ahmadinejad quotes Khomeini, it could mean many different things, of course: it could be a matter of domestic politics or it could reflect his personal views or it could reflect an official government position. But people seeking to gauge the actual prospects for peaceful developments in the Middle East might not be terribly cheered by quibbling over whether the Khomeini quote is a "threat" or a "prophecy."

[countryjake]

25. What's really wacko is that the USA preferred Khomeini to those "leftists"

Look into how many popular revolutionaries were murdered or disappeared in early 1979 Iran and then, within a matter of months, thanks to the work of the CIA and Savama (former Savak members?) the ousting of the Shah magically transformed into Islamic fundamentalism.

[struggle4progress]

30. ".. To curry the favor of Khomeini, in 1983 the CIA gave his government ..

.. a list of KGB agents and collaborators operating in Iran. Khomeini then executed 200 suspects and closed down the communist Tudeh party .."
The Indonesian Massacres and the CIA
by Ralph McGehee
Covert Action Quarterly, Fall 1990
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/McGehee_CIA_Indo.html

It's clear from the history that the Reaganites worked with Iran in a number of ways, while simultaneously supporting Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. The idea, that Khomeini would kill a number of "communists" and that the Iranian connection could also be used to support Reagan's program of terrorism in Nicaragua, was apparently irresistable to the Reaganites.

It's hard to imagine what control the CIA had over the Iranian situation in 1979: the Shah left in January, and Khomeini returned in February, naming an interim government, leading to a power struggle between Khomeini and the existing PM. In November, the US Embassy was taken over and the Army declared its neutrality with respect to Khomeini and the PM. The Embassy take-over enabled Khomeini to consolidate his power and led to a huge release of CIA documents (largely unknown in the US). The reasonable conjecture might be that US policy, covert or otherwise, hoped Bakhtiar could remain in control adequately to allow SAVAK to reimpose "normalcy," so that SAVAK went about its usual work as the situation deteriorated. The Reagan record shows that the US decided at some point to collaborate with Khomeini, but his long-avowed ideological views and anti-Westernism make him a very unlikely stooge.

[ECH1969]

5. Sane or not Sane?

[napi21]

6. FWIW, I have heard that the translation was wrong.

He strongly criticized the Gov;t of Israel, and said THEY should be deposed, but he did NOT say the Country should be wiped off the face of the earth.

I don't have a link, and to be honest, I can't recall exactly where I heard it, but because I listen to CNN & msNbc most of the time,that's probably a likely source.

[teach1st]

7. Here's one opinion...

http://www.safecom.org.au/iran-israel.htm

The most infamous quote, "Israel must be wiped off the map", is the most glaringly wrong. In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word "map" or the term "wiped off". According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was "this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."

What did he mean? In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah's regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the "occupying regime" in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence, "This too shall pass."

But there is that pesky and reported Holocaust denial.

[slaveplanet]

15. yep

Ever hear of "cherry picking"?

"this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."


Oohh this is booga booga, scary stuff...


I've also heard that taken in context, statements like this from Ahmadinejad are usually in response to... prefaced by..." if Israeli zionist regime keeps making these statements that they are going to attack us".... then .... "this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." Although this direct quote isn't the best example as it was a quote from an early time period and meant to be prophetic in nature.

But in other instances... the media will leave off that first part and get creative with the translation..."Wipe"..."Israel(instead of regime)"..."face of the Map"...etc, etc...

So in a sense it's a response to Likudite threats, and then it's basically... "he's such a Madman".............. for responding to another entity directly threatening his and his countrymen's existence?

Only they'll leave that last context out as well.

How dare he, What a loon!

Fact: It is Ahmadinejad not Israel or Bushco that wants to open up a dialog of understanding...and backed it up by putting it in writing and released it to the world.

Fact: It is China who's declared that they are going to take Taiwan,
and if there's any interference, They have 200 long range Nuclear tipped ICBMs targeting major American cities and some medium to minor ones too.

Fact: Israeli scholars have come forth and disclosed that some of their nukes target European cities.

Fact: The world's a dangerous place

Bombing and killing everything somebody else tells you to, is not a wise course of action.

[starroute]

29. He attacked the cult of the Holocaust, not its reality

http://www.counterpunch.org/tilley08282006.html

Skepticism about the Holocaust narrative has started to take hold in the Middle East not because people hate Jews but because that narrative is deployed to argue that Israel has a right to "defend itself" by attacking every country in its vicinity. Middle East publics are so used to western canards legitimizing colonial or imperial takeovers that some wonder if the six-million-dead argument is just another myth or exaggerated tale. It is dismal that Mr. Ahmadinejad seems to belong to this sector.

Still, Mr. Ahmadinejad did not say what the US Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy reported that he said: "They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets." He actually said, "In the name of the Holocaust they have created a myth and regard it to be worthier than God, religion and the prophets." This language targets the myth of the Holocaust, not the Holocaust itself - i.e., "myth" as "mystique", or what has been done with the Holocaust. Other writers, including important Jewish theologians, have criticized the "cult" or "ghost" of the Holocaust without denying that it happened. In any case, Mr. Ahmadinejad's main message has been that, if the Holocaust happened as Europe says it did, then Europe, and not the Muslim world, is responsible for it.

[Behind the Aegis]

34. And David Duke attacks the cult of slavery, not its reality...

:puke:

[grassfed]

8. Ahmadinejad did NOT say "Wipe Israel off the map" link

http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html

[Kindigger]

10. Mike Wallace interview

He was asked about this "statement". He explained that since the atrocities against the Jews happened in Germany etc., why hadn't they put Israel over in that part of the world someplace? It would have avoided a lot of hate and discontent.

Made perfect sense to me.

[Malikshah]

11. Butbutbutbutbut...Lynnn *in my best whiney voice* War mongering

is soooo much fun!

Those calling for links need to do some of their own research. It's there.

Thanks to those who did others' homework.

:)

[LynnTheDem]

12. Want some CHEESE with that whine??!

:D

Now stop yer whining and but me no more of them buts!

[Malikshah]

14. Whatever goes with Shiraz...uh...oops. My bad.

Guess that's not the best wine to suggest at this point...

[kdpeters]

21. Hold on a minute. So I can make any assertion and you have to look it up?

Those calling for links need to do some of their own research. It's there.

That's so cool. I always had these lazy ass teachers that wouldn't do their own research for my term papers. Can you believe they ME to provide THEM with references? I'm with you. Why is it my responsibility to support what I say? If they don't believe me, they can look it up. It's out there.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Lurking Dem]

32. Yes we run the world.

You bank at our banks.

You read our newspapers.

You watch our television news programs, shows and Hollywood movies.

You buy groceries that have that nefarious K in the circle on them.

You fight in our wars.

We are the Zionists and if we have our way NO ONE will be able to eat pork or shellfish (unless they are at a Chinese restaraunt!)

Get used to it.

:sarcasm:

[oblivious]

16. Thank you for exposing the war propaganda, Lynn. Some more links:

Gwynn Dyer: THE IRANIAN ‘CRISIS’

Ahmedinejad never said he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map." This is a strange and perhaps deliberate mistranslation of his actual words, a direct quote from the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the font of all wisdom in revolutionary Iran, who said some twenty years ago that "this regime occupying Jerusalem (i.e. Israel) must vanish from the page of time."

It was a statement about the future (possibly the quite far future) as ordained by God. It was NOT a threat to destroy Israel. Attacking Israel has never been Iranian policy, and a few days later the man who really runs Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, publicly stated that Iran "will not commit aggression against any nation." While Ahmadinejad continues to say nasty things about Israel, he too has explicitly rejected accusations that Iran plans to attack it.
http://www.azg.am/?lang=EN&num=2006090201

Putting Words in Ahmadinejad's Mouth
VIRGINIA TILLEY
...In this frightening mess in the Middle East, let's get one thing straight. Iran is not threatening Israel with destruction. Iran's president has not threatened any action against Israel. Over and over, we hear that Iran is clearly "committed to annihilating Israel" because the "mad" or "reckless" or "hard-line" President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel But every supposed quote, every supposed instance of his doing so, is wrong.

The most infamous quote, "Israel must be wiped off the map", is the most glaringly wrong. In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word "map" or the term "wiped off". According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was "this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."

What did he mean? In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah's regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the "occupying regime" in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence, "This too shall pass."

http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=5439&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Myth and Myth-take
A short while ago, the Western media reported Ahmadinejad as having spoken of “wiping out Israel.” In reality, in a speech whose theme was the urgency of finding a political solution to the Palestinian nightmare, he had simply employed a quotation from the Ayatollah Khomeini in order to illustrate a point. He could not possibly have foreseen that his words would be taken out of context and mistranslated to be trumpeted across the world. Again, one must keep in mind that he speaks as a scholar and deals in ideas. When he used the quotation about “wiping out Israel,” he was speaking of the necessity of a radical modification in what the concept of “Israel” represents. He was not speaking of some kind of physical destruction of a physical entity.
http://www.liquidtype.net/node/1791

Quoth he ... Never mind!!
1 – What President Ahmadinejad actually said was that Israel "should be eliminated from the pages of history.” He did not say “Israel should be wiped off the map.”

2 – The Western newsmedia never bothered to report that President Ahmadinejad was merely quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

3 - And, of course, the Western newsmedia never bothered to mention that the distorted translation of President Ahmadinejad’s remarks was the work of the New York Times reporter Nazli Fathi.
http://alse.blogspot.com/

Jonathan Steele: Lost in translation
Finally we come to the BBC monitoring service which every day puts out hundreds of highly respected English translations of broadcasts from all round the globe to their subscribers - mainly governments, intelligence services, thinktanks and other specialists. I approached them this week about the controversy and a spokesperson for the monitoring service's marketing unit, who did not want his name used, told me their original version of the Ahmadinejad quote was "eliminated from the map of the world".
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_steele/2006/06/post_155.html

[leftchick]

24. thank you for the links!

what should be front page at the WaPo and NYTs is relagated to the internets. Thank Gore for them.

[struggle4progress]

28. Aljazeera still reports that Ahmadinejad made such a comment ..

Wednesday 26 October 2005, 19:03 Makka Time, 16:03 GMT

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has openly called for Israel to be wiped off the map.
"The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," the president told a conference in Tehran on Wednesday, entitled The World without Zionism.

"The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land," he said.

"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayat Allah Khomeini ...

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/15E6BF77-6F91-46EE-A4B5-A3CE0E9957EA.htm

Presumably, they have the resources to obtain a decent translation. And it's not entirely clear to me that this particular al-Jazeera is an Administration propaganda asset:

23 November 2005
LAW CHIEF GAGS THE MIRROR ON BUSH LEAK
By Kevin Maguire

THE Daily Mirror was yesterday told not to publish further details from a top secret memo, which revealed that .. Blair talked Bush out of attacking satellite station al-Jazeera's HQ in friendly Qatar ...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16401707&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=law-chief-gags-the-mirror-on-bush-leak-name_page.html

Chomsky, meanwhile, interprets a Khamenei statement as a possible reprimand of Ahmadenijad:

An Interview with Noam Chomsky on Lebanon
Apocalypse Near
By MERAV YUDILOVITCH

In June 2006, Khamenei issued an official declaration stating that Iran agrees with the Arab countries on the issue of Palestine, meaning that it accepts the 2002 Arab League call for full normalization of relations with Israel in a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus. The timing suggests that this might have been a reprimand to his subordinate Ahmadenijad, whose inflammatory statements are given wide publicity in the West, unlike the far more important declaration by his superior Khamenei. Just a few days ago, former Iranian diplomat Saddagh Kharazzi "reaffirmed that Iran would back a two-state solution if the Palestinians accepted" (Financial Times, July 26, 2006).

http://www.counterpunch.org/chomsky08162006.html

[oblivious]

35. No, Al-Jazeera news stories are almost completely AP.

With a few Reuters and AFP stories. The one you quoted is 'agencies', which means a combination of AP and perhaps Reuters.

[struggle4progress]

39. Thanx: this one seems to be AFP, as similar text in Deccan Herald:

Israel should be wiped off the map, says Iranian President
Tehran,AFP:

Iran’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has openly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”.

“The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world,” he told a conference in Tehran on Wednesday. The meet was held to discuss ‘The World without Zionism’.

“The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land,” he said ...

http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/Oct272005/foreign1885120051026.asp


Last Updated: Friday, 28 October 2005, 15:19 GMT 16:19 UK
Iran leader defends Israel remark

... Attending an anti-Israel rally in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his remarks were "just" - and the criticism did not "have any validity" ... Egypt said they showed "the weakness of the Iranian government". A Palestinian official also rejected the remarks ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4384264.stm


... In Paris, Ahmadinejad's comments prompted the French foreign minister to summon the Iranian ambassador for an explanation ... Foreign ministries in Berlin, Madrid and Rome also made their opposition to Ahmadinejad's remarks known to Iran's representatives in their countries, AP reported. Spain summoned the Iranian ambassador in Madrid to protest the comments, while the German Foreign Ministry summoned a representative of the Iranian Embassy to underline Berlin's opposition to the remarks ... http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/10/27/ahmadinejad.reaction/

While I would be happy to be convinced that this is all propaganda, I've just cited a French press service, the BBC, and claims that a number of governments asked for an explanation of the comments. Presumably not all of them rely on wingnut American propagandists for their translations ...

[Kurovski]

17. K&R(nt)

[Tom Joad]

18. US cluster bombs hang from the Olive trees in Lebanon. Who is

wiping who off the map. One million bombs. Yes, Lebanon is still on the map, but they certainly think the US and Lebanon are a threat. I think for good reason.

The government of Iran is an reactionary regime in many ways. But it is bush/cheney and Olmert and gang that have constantly repeated the most violent threats (including leaving nuclear weapons "on the table"!) against Iran.
Let's just say this is not helping.

[stephinrome]

20. there has been much talk of the proper way to translate what...

...Ahmadinejad said, at least on the internet. Thanks to those who posted the links and ??? to those who questioned people for asking for links.

But as someone mentioned above, there is still that pesky question of holocaust denial. And since Juan Cole was used as a source for the poor translation regarding Israel, let's also use him for his thoughts on the denial.

From Sept 25 Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Cole, Ahmadinejad's comments have come up again, as he comes to the United States, about denying the Holocaust.

JUAN COLE: Yes, Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier. He has a thing about Jews and Israel and the Holocaust that comes across very clearly when he talks about it. It's a kind of paranoia or fixation. And, you know, Ahmadinejad is not a really educated man. He's got an engineering degree. He's from what we call the bazaari class. This is people who, from a shopkeeping background or hung around at mosques, and kind of self-educated, and so forth. So he’s not a man of the world.

His predecessor, President Mohammad Khatami, lived in Germany for seven years and has written, using the German sociologist Jurgen Habermas’s theories of civil society. Khatami has written on dialogue of civilizations and open society, and so forth, and has reprimanded Ahmadinejad for his bizarre statements about the Holocaust. So this is not, you know, an Iranian government stance or an Iranian stance. This is something that’s peculiar to Ahmadinejad.

And remember, the Iranian president is powerless, virtually. The commander-in-chief of the armed forces is Khamenei, the Supreme Juridprudent. Ahmadinejad can consult on the appointment of cabinet ministers and ambassadors, but there are very few orders that he could give of any significance in the Iranian system. He's kind of like our Secretary of the Interior or something. So what he thinks about things isn't that important.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/25/1318238

Steph

[many a good man]

27. "And remember, the Iranian president is powerless, virtually."

I wish everyone would remember that. He's just like bush: riling up the base and scaring the moderates.

[leftchick]

22. Juan Cole made a point of explaining it

in his informed comment blog. That is the only place I have seen it mentioned.

[oblivious]

23. See my post 16 for more.

[Igel]

31. "Must" versus "will".

"John Dean must vanish from the pages of time."

"John Dean will vanish from the pages of time."

Which can be a prophecy, which can be a threat, and which is merely expressing a wish? Most importantly, under what circumstances and context?

I have trouble finding lots of good circumstances for 'must' to be a prophecy, but I'm unfamiliar with the ins and outs of how epistemic/deontic modality is expressed in Persian--unless he was saying it in Arabic. Surely it *can* be a sort of prophecy, a statement of fact: John Dean is mortal, therefore he must die. It is, however, an interpretation severely depending on context, with a reading of deontic modality (at least in English) being much more common. And the distinction between wish and threat is rather meaningless when it's the Extremely Supremely Exalted Worthy-to-be-Emulated Leader. I read Cole's writing on the matter; he didn't prove his point, he merely asserted his point over and over until he was quite convinced that he had convinced his readers that he had proven it.

People seem to defend Ahmie, because it goes to support a domestic political argument they really want to make. Winning the argument is more necessary than accuracy. The implication is clear--the Iranians' naming their new missile Khaiber is also crystal clear in meaning, in the same vein. Naming the missile "Auschwitz" would have preserved one clear import of the name, and would have been clearer to a non-Muslim audience. Khaiber ... where the pious Muslims under the peaceful Muhammed destroyed the community of the perfidious Jews, killing most, taking the survivors as slaves ("serfs", in the bowdlerized version), and finally ethnically cleansing them to produce a Judenrein area. But clarity is not desired here, because it makes the wrong bad people look bad. And that is politically wrong in this instance, or politicheski nepravil'no, to use an infamous Russian phrase.

[Behind the Aegis]

33. But, but, but...the Pope was just quoting.....

FUCKING AMAZING! The Pope quotes some obscure other Pope and the Muslim world (and DU) goes fucking ape-shit! This bastard quotes a former head of religion and we are supposed to "dismiss" it! One "insulted" a religion, the other calls for the "removal" of a government (supposedly). There is no difference :sarcasm:!

The bigotry against Israel here is foul! How is it any fucking different than those at that other place and their rantings about Iran or Iraq? Seems to me, some don't know what real bigotry is!

[fujiyama]

36. I still haven't figured out

why so many go out of their way to defend this man's statements.

[countryjake]

37. Drumming up another war against Iran is what is foul...

People here are not dismissing anything, they are examining closely the possible reasons that our own government might wish to make Iran more of a threat to us than it really may be.

The difference is that those at that other place would love nothing more than to wipe Iran, Iraq, and any other "enemy" off the "map...that is the reason that forum exists, to give right-wingnuts a sounding board.

What you call "bigotry" here is actually a desire to expose the mechanizations (thru propaganda) of our own corrupt and imperialist regime in their endless drive to "cleanse" and bring "freedom" to the Middle East.

[Behind the Aegis]

38. Excusing this madman's statement's is foul!

I agree that we do not need another war, but to dismiss outright some of the bullshit this asshole spews is ignorant and myopic!

The bigotry expressed here, against Israel, is very real and it is disgusting beyond belief. However, because they have a "right-wing" government, it is OK to spew endless propaganda of one's own and deride this nation as an imperialist regime, all the while ignoring the other fucking regimes in the region as nothing more than innocent victims of the Rove propaganda machine. :puke: There is no desire to expose anything. The only thing exposed by many here is their hate for Israel!

[Warren DeMontague]

40. Okay, here's a question: From his recent interview w/Mike Wallace-

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/09/60minutes/main1879867.shtml

"Please tell me, are the Lebanese inside the occupied lands right now or is it the other way around, that the Zionist troops are in Lebanese territory?"

Perhaps you can explain what, precisely, Ahmadinejad meant by "Occupied Lands".

You know, it's ridiculous. One can acknowledge that Iran's president is a totalitarian, Fundamentalist asshole (as are Bush's pals, the Family Saud) who does NOT recognize Israel's right to exist -Here's a news flash- neither does Hezbollah, neither does Hamas- without being onboard for some idiotic, pre-emptive war with Iran.

A few people here continually want to turn the guy into Ghandi. He's NOT Ghandi.

[undergroundrailroad]

41. Locking per I/P guidelines.

Not based on a recently-published article or op-ed.

New threads must be based on a recently-published news item or op-ed piece. They may not be based on editorial cartoons or photographs. Citations and references should include a link to the original source. Exceptions will be allowed if, based on prior approval, the moderators feel a thread is appropriate.

Undergroundrailroad
DU Moderator
I/P Forum Affairs