On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:03:01 -0700, Diogenes wrote:

On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 17:37:36 -0700, Joshua Putnam
wrote:

In article , Diogenes
says...

But Mr. Iran President, former mayor of Baghdad "Israel must be wiped
off the face of the earth" outdid Condi, as does any mouthpiece for
Islamic world hegemony, and now terrorism.

Ya gotta remember that the Arabic language (which I wish I had enuff
years left to learn!-- [....]

So, let me see if I have this right.

The president of Iran used to be the mayor of Baghdad, and he's part of
a greater Arabic culture.

What's an Arabic-speaking Iraqi doing as president of Persia? Couldn't
find any qualified Iranians for the job?

Guess that means the Iranians are over the resentments of the Iran-Iraq
war....

Yikes...my head was up my...

I meant mayor of TEHRAN!

Sorry.

Diogenes

And, of course, I compounded the linguistic felony by taking off on my
(accurate) discussion of Arabic -- whereas Amena-whathisname was
speaking FARSI. I swear, there are days when it just doesn't pay to
get up in the morning...

In my own very feeble defense, I'll just say that terrorists do tend
to sound remarkably alike.

Amena-whathisname didn't pull out all the God stops in his interview
with Mike Wallace, like an Arabic speaker would.

There is plenty of material on the Web about his being a Holocaust
denier, and the usual stuff about the "Zionists", and on and on.
He belongs to a very extreme sect of Islam. From WikiPedia:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Membership in Hojjatieh Society

Ahmadinejad is believed by many to belong, or to have once belonged,
to the anti-Bahai and anti-Sunni clandestine society known as
Hojjatieh. An Islamic society to which Ahmadinejad belonged when he
attended Alm-u Sanat University was, according to an article that
appeared in the Asia Times Online, an extreme, traditional, and
fundamentalist group that maintained close links with Hojjatieh. Three
members of Ahmadinejad's cabinet are said to have Hojjatieh
backgrounds, including Hojatoleslam Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehyi, the
intelligence chief who graduated from the Haqqani theological school,
founded by Hojjatieh. Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, a Shi'ite
cleric closley associated with the school, issued a fatwa urging two
million members of the bassij Islamic militia to vote for Ahmadinejad
in the 2005 presidential elections.


Eschatology

Ahmadinejad's religious beliefs in the imminent return of the
"occulted" Shi'a Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi have alarmed some Western
commentators [26] [27]. In particular, remarks reportedly made after
his speech before the United Nations General Assembly have created
concern (translated):

On the last day when I was speaking before the assembly, one of
our group told me that when I started to say "In the name of God the
almighty and merciful," he saw a light around me, and I was placed
inside this aura. I felt it myself. *
I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28
minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. When I say they
didn't bat an eyelid, I'm not exaggerating because I was looking at
them. And they were rapt.
It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their
eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic. [28]

*[Sounds like George "God told me to" Bush...scary!]

Former CIA officer Robert Baer said, in the context of evaluating a
nuclear strike on Iran, that Ahmadinejad and others in the Iranian
government are "apocalyptic Shiites... These guys are nuts and there's
no reason to back off." [29]

Some have conjectured that his actions are strictly a means of
bolstering his standing among Islamic fundamentalists. [30]

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Diogenes