This should come as no surprise. Anyone who denies the Holocaust would make a perfect 9-11 Truther. I guess we were right when we denied Ahmadinejad a visit to Ground Zero.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the United States on Tuesday of using the September 11, 2001 attacks as a “pretext” to launch invasions and cast doubt on the accepted version of the terror strikes.
“On the pretext of this incident a major military operation was launched and oppressed Afghanistan was attacked. Tens of thousands of people have been killed until now,” he said in a speech broadcast on state television.
“Poor Iraq was attacked. According to official figures… one million people have been killed,” he said in the speech marking Iran’s day of nuclear technology.
He appeared to cast doubt on the official version of the attacks, saying the names of those killed had never been published and questioning how the planes had hit the towers of the World Trade Centre in New York.
“An event was created in the name of the attack against the twin towers. We were all sad. It was said that 3,000 people were killed,” Ahmadinejad said.
“But the names of the 3,000 people were never published and nobody was able to respond to the main question, which is how is it possible that with the best radar systems and intelligence networks the planes could crash undetected into the towers.”
This is the first time that Ahmadinejad has spoken publicly about his interpretation of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The government of Iran’s then reformist president Mohammad Khatami was quick to condemn the airborne attacks on New York and Washington carried out by Al-Qaeda militants which killed nearly 3,000 people.
However hardline newspapers have on occasion described the attacks as a conspiracy that was devised by the White House to justify its attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iran and the United States have had no diplomatic relations since the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution and remain at loggerheads over the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme.
“Discrimination has been applied in the world and the lie has become the rule. Threat and pillage is something that has become acceptable,” Ahmadinejad added.
The controversial president has previously provoked outrage by describing the Holocaust as a “myth” and raising doubts over the scale of the mass slaughter of Jews in World War II.
In his speech to Iranian dignitaries and some foreign diplomats, he also predicted the “demise” of the major powers which emerged victorious in World War II and have since dominated the international system.
He said Iran’s nuclear achievements mark the “acceleration of the trend to the destruction of major powers and with God’s help this will become reality. World powers are struggling to survive.”
The UN Security Council, whose permanent veto-wielding members are the victorious Allied powers from World War II, has imposed three sets of sanctions against Iran for refusing to suspend sensitive nuclear work.
Ahmadinejad described the Iranian nuclear programme as the “most important political event in the contemporary era.”
Oil Rich, Energy Independent, Iran Starts Installing New Nuclear Centrifuges; that is the headline the “Main Stream Media” should have plastered all over the place. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that an oil rich nation like Iran has no need for Nuclear power. That’s right they don’t need it. Their ultimate goal is to obtain nuclear weapons so that they can destroy Israel and Western Theologies. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been saying this for years but the world has refused to take him seriously.
Well the clock is ticking and it is getting so loud that the world must act now. United Nation sanctions are useless folly designed only to either buy time or continue collecting payoff monies from Iran.
If I can simplify this for all the misguided Liberals, the only realistic way to handle such a brutal regime is to turn Iran and all its inhabitants into glass parking lot. We and Israel have the power to do it and eventually we will have to. Time is not on our side.
Iran on Tuesday said it had started work to install thousands of new centrifuges to enrich uranium at its main nuclear plant, angering world powers who fear Tehran wants to develop an atomic weapon. “Today, the phase for installing 6,000 new centrifuges at the facility in Natanz has started,” the state broadcasting website quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying at the atomic plant.
His announcement came as Iran marked its “national day of nuclear technology” on the second anniversary of its first production of uranium sufficiently enriched to make atomic fuel.
Iran has already installed around 3,000 P1 centrifuges at an underground enrichment facility at Natanz, in central Iran, according to the latest report by the UN nuclear watchdog, and tripling this number would mark a major expansion of its nuclear capacities.
The West fears Iran could use enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon, and Tehran’s refusal to suspend the process has been punished with three sets of UN Security Council sanctions and US pressure on its banking system.
World powers responded swiftly and with concern to Ahmadinejad’s latest defiant announcement.
Gregory Schulte, the US ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said “today’s announcement reflects the Iranian leadership’s continuing violation of international obligations and refusal to address international concerns.”
The British foreign office said that by announcing the installation of new centrifuges Iran had “chosen to ignore the will of the international community.
“This is despite the fact that Iran’s enrichment programme has no apparent civilian purpose, and shows that Iran is making no effort to restore international confidence in its intentions,” it said.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the international community must consider “reinforced” sanctions if Iran does not respond to concerns about its nuclear programme.
Ahmadinejad also inspected a “new generation” of centrifuges being built at an above-ground research facility at the plant, the official IRNA news agency reported.
These are Iran’s version of the more efficient P2 centrifuges — the IR-2 — which can enrich uranium considerably faster than the standard P1s. The reports did not say how many of these centrifuges Iran has built.
Ahmadinejad said he would announce more “good news” at a major ceremony at 1600 GMT at the headquarters of Iranian state broadcasting in Tehran alongside the head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation Gholam Reza Aghazadeh.
State television was repeatedly playing patriotic music while children at schools around the country chanted the familiar mantra of “nuclear energy is our natural right.”
Tehran has repeatedly insisted that it has no intention of making concessions over calls for it to freeze enrichment, leading to deadlock in the standoff with the international community.
Iran insists that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and solely aimed at generating energy for a growing population whose supply of fossil fuels will eventually run out.
The United States has never ruled out military action to bring Tehran to heel, and Iran’s arch enemy Israel has expressed alarm about the nuclear drive, especially after Ahmadinejad predicted the Jewish state is doomed to disappear.
Underlining the tensions, Israel’s National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer warned on Monday that Israel would respond to any Iranian attack by destroying the “Iranian nation.”
The Chinese foreign ministry said on Tuesday that envoys from world powers would meet in Shanghai on April 16 to discuss how to end the standoff over the Iranian nuclear programme.
But Iran is also believed to have experienced difficulties in utilising its existing centrifuges to full capacity.
Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, has said it was “natural in this kind of industry that there are ups and downs once in a while.”
In a warning to Ahmadinejad’s domestic rivals, the semi-official Fars news agency reported that Iran had handed former nuclear negotiator Hossein Moussavian a two-year suspended jail sentence for “harming national security.”
Moussavian was a leading nuclear negotiator in the moderate team that made a deal with EU countries to temporarily suspend enrichment during the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami until 2005.
If you judge Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by appearance alone, you would think he descended from monkeys but when he opens his mouth that confirms it. He may be as dumb as a box of rocks. Apparently he thinks George Bush is running for President again in 2008.
He denounces it as the “Great Satan” and frequently dismisses its power, but the overtures of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to the US seem to grow ever more extravagant. Having failed to win a response with an 18-page letter to President George Bush or to a request to visit the site of the September 11 2001 attack on New York, Ahmadinejad has offered himself as an observer in next year’s presidential election.
The proposal came in a speech to volunteers with the Basij, a pro-regime militia. He said he was prompted by a belief that Americans would vote against the current administration in a truly free poll. However, the terms of Ahmadinejad’s offer appeared to betray some confusion about the potential candidates.
“If the White House officials allow us to be present as an observer in their presidential election we will see whether people in their country are going to vote for them again or not,” he said. The US constitution prevents Bush from seeking a third consecutive term, while no member of his administration is expected to be in the running in next November’s poll.
Bush and international human rights groups voiced doubts about the legitimacy of Iran’s 2005 presidential election, which brought Ahmadinejad to power. More than 1,000 potential candidates were disqualified by the guardian council, a powerful body of clerics and judges.
Some domestic critics pointed out yesterday that Ahmadinejad’s idea clashed with his government’s opposition to allowing independent observers at Iranian elections. The interior ministry, controlled by one of the president’s most hard-line allies, has rejected pressure for party representatives to be allowed to oversee proceedings at polling stations for next March’s parliamentary poll.
The election is expected to provide a major test of Ahmadinejad’s popularity. Leading regime figures, including two former presidents, Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, have warned against possible attempts to rig it through mass candidate disqualifications and other measures.
The wife of an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hezbollah confronted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a news conference at the United Nations, urging him to use his influence over the guerrilla group to allow aid workers to see her husband.
In an exchange broadcast on Israeli radio stations Wednesday, Karnit Goldwasser accused the Iranian leader of responsibility for her husband’s capture.
“My name is Karnit and I’m the wife of Goldwasser that was kidnapped by Hezbollah to Lebanon more than a year ago and you’re responsible for this by your support. I’m asking how come you’re not allowing the Red Cross to go to visit them,” Goldwasser said at the Tuesday news conference.
Ahmadinejad ignored her, saying “next question.”
Goldwasser told Israeli Army Radio on Wednesday that Ahmadinejad was clearly caught off guard. “He was pretty surprised to find me there,” she said. “The distance between us was about two meters (yards),”
Goldwasser’s husband, Israeli soldier Ehud Goldwasser, and Eldad Regev were seized in a July 2006 Hezbollah cross-border raid, triggering a 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah did not comment on Tuesday’s incident at the U.N. In the past, Hezbollah has said the two soldiers are being treated “humanely,” but it has not provided any sign of life from the men and refused to allow the Red Cross to see them.
Is America’s worst president responsible for the current state of turmoil in the world?
The Jerusalem Post has an excellent opinion that pretty much pin points it.
We just don’t get it. The Left in America is screaming to high heaven that the mess we are in in Iraq and the war on terrorism has been caused by the right-wing and that George W. Bush, the so-called “dim-witted cowboy,” has created the entire mess.
The truth is the entire nightmare can be traced back to the liberal democratic policies of the leftist Jimmy Carter, who created a firestorm that destabilized our greatest ally in the Muslim world, the shah of Iran, in favor of a religious fanatic, the ayatollah Khomeini.
Carter viewed Khomeini as more of a religious holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. Carter’s ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.” Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” Carter adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979 that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid, but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.”
The shah was terrified of Carter. He told his personal confidant, “Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?”
Let’s look at the results of Carter’s misguided liberal policies: the Islamic Revolution in Iran; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Carter’s response was to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics); the birth of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization; the Iran-Iraq War, which cost the lives of millions dead and wounded; and yes, the present war on terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
WHEN CARTER entered the political fray in 1976, America was still riding the liberal wave of anti-Vietnam War emotion. Carter asked for an in-depth report on Iran even before he assumed the reins of government and was persuaded that the shah was not fit to rule Iran. 1976 was a banner year for pacifism: Carter was elected president, Bill Clinton became attorney-general of Arkansas, and Albert Gore won a place in the Tennessee House of Representatives.
In his anti-war pacifism, Carter never got it that Khomeini, a cleric exiled to Najaf in Iraq from 1965-1978, was preparing Iran for revolution. Proclaiming “the West killed God and wants us to bury him,” Khomeini’s weapon of choice was not the sword but the media. Using tape cassettes smuggled by Iranian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Najaf, he fueled disdain for what he called gharbzadegi (“the plague of Western culture”).
Carter pressured the shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.
Gen. Robert Huyser, Carter’s military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: “The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. ‘One cannot do that to a holy man,’ he said.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has donned the mantle of Ayatollah Khomeini, taken up bin Laden’s call, and is fostering an Islamic apocalyptic revolution in Iraq with the intent of taking over the Middle East and the world.
Jimmy Carter became the poster boy for the ideological revolution of the 1960s in the West, hell bent on killing the soul of America. The bottom line: Carter believed then and still does now is that evil really does not exist; people are basically good; America should embrace the perpetrators and castigate the victims.
IN THE ’60S it was mass rebellion after the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. When humanity confronts eternity, the response is always rebellion or repentance. The same ideologues who fought to destroy the soul of America with the “God is dead” movement in the 1960s are now running the arts, the universities, the media, the State Department, Congress, and Senate, determined more then ever to kill the soul of America while the East attempts to kill the body. Carter’s world view defines the core ideology of the Democratic Party.
What is going on in Iraq is no mystery to those of us who have had our fingers on the pulse of both Iran and Iraq for decades. The Iran-Iraq war was a war of ideologies. Saddam Hussein saw himself as an Arab leader who would defeat the non-Arab Persians. Khomeini saw it as an opportunity to export his Islamic Revolution across the borders to the Shi’ites in Iraq and then beyond to the Arab countries.
Throughout the war both leaders did everything possible to incite the inhabitants of each country to rebel – precisely what Iran is doing in Iraq today. Khomeini encouraged the Shi’ites across the border to remove Saddam from power and establish an Islamic republic like in Iran.
Carter’s belief that every crisis can be resolved with diplomacy – and nothing but diplomacy – now permeates the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, Carter is wrong.
There are times when evil must be openly confronted and defeated.
KHOMEINI HAD the help of the PLO in Iran. They supplied weapons and terrorists to murder Iranians and incite mobs in the streets. No wonder Yasser Arafat was hailed as a friend of Khomeini after he seized control of Iran and was given the Israeli Embassy in Teheran with the PLO flag flying overhead.
The Carter administration scrambled to assure the new regime that the United States would maintain diplomatic ties with Iran. But on April 1, 1979 the greatest April Fools’ joke of all time was played, as Khomeini proclaimed it the first day of the government of God.
In February 1979 Khomeini had boarded an Air France flight to return to Teheran with the blessing of Jimmy Carter. The moment he arrived, he proclaimed: “I will kick his teeth in” – referring to then prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar, who was left in power with a US pledge of support. He was assassinated in Paris by Iranian agents in 1991.
I sat in the home of Gen. Huyser, who told me the shah feared he would lose the country if he implemented Carter’s polices. Carter had no desire to see the shah remain in power. He really believed that a cleric – whose Islamist fanaticism he did not understand in the least – would be better for human rights and Iran.
He could have changed history by condemning Khomeini and getting the support of our allies to keep him out of Iran.
This should come as no surprise. Anyone who denies the Holocaust would make a perfect 9-11 Truther. I guess we were right when we denied Ahmadinejad a visit to Ground Zero. 
