Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not respond fully to a single question asked by either the National Press Club, or anyone at Columbia. In fact, he actually answered a question on why Iran is executing homosexuals by declaring that there are no homosexuals in Iran.
As I said the other day, talking to Mad Mahmoud is a waste of time. He lies, denies, and redirects the question (thanks to KCtheKat for that particular turn of phrase).
About the only thing I learned today is that Mahmoud gets really pissed when people ask him tough questions.
If you listened to his long, boring, droning speeches before the question-and-answer sessions, you may have wondered, “WTF?” Well, remember that in his pre-presidential life, he was an academic. He thinks very highly of himself. Also, he finds himself in the rare position of being able to preach Islam to thousands of infidels (if not millions via TV, the web, and various video outlets). And then there’s his belonging to the cult of the Twelfth Imam, who’s hiding down a well somewhere waiting to come back, but not before destroying much of the infidel world first, I think. Not sure of the details; don’t care to look them up.
I’m sure Robert Spencer will have a post analyzing the Islamic messages that Ahmadinejad was trying to get across. Here’s a sample:
He said people should follow God, who would lead them to a “sublime” state.
“When we take a look around us, we are not happy with what we see,” Ahmadinejad said. “Threats of war have affected everyone. Continuous wars have in fact hurt the human spirit. If we look at the root cause of some of these problems, we will be able to think about how to build a better future, a more prosperous future based on peace and security of all humanity.”
Spencer says:
No one realizes, of course, that when he is calling people to follow God, he is calling for the institution of Sharia.
Uh-huh. I’m sure there’s more.
Talking to this maniac is a waste of time.You can never believe the man.
All of us have a fairly accurate sense who Ahmadinejad is and what he intends, compared to say, what the Western world knew about Hitler when he spoke at the athletic games held in Berlin in 1936.
What we need to do now is to better understand how to deal with him. Personally I don’t think he should be ignored, nor do I think he can be contained, and I have no positive expectation that the plans of Bush/Rice will work, rather I think (that if we allow him to,) this man will lead our world into one disaster after another.
In the past, Hamen’s have never succeeded, except in one way — they usually manage to kill lot’s of people before being brought down. My fear is that Ahmadinejad will be no different, that he will kill many.
Sorry, but I would perfer the dead be Iranians and not Jews. Because we’re not the cause of the problem. He doesn’t belong to Israel.
I read Isaiah before writing this. Isaiah, in chapters 15 through 23 described several countries, in fact he made a panoramic tour of the city-states and even the empires that surrounded Israel. Nothing stands out. True, later, much later, Iran and Egypt are at peace with Israel, and in fact Isaiah, writing before automobiles describes a road from Alexandria to Persia that cross’s Israel. And all is peaceful. But this for an age to come.
It’s not just Ahmedinejad. He is the public face of the Ayatollahs, carefully selected by the Supreme Leader (that would be fuehrer in German) to be Iran’s face to the world. Thus he is doing exactly what the Ayatollahs want him to do. If he comes across as a maniac, that is the impression they want us to have of Iran.
There is no diplomatic carrot or stick that will get the Pharaohs of Tehran to abandon their nuke quest. The rewards of being a nuclear power are just too great for them. For the sake of that power they have impoverished their state and risked diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions, although I suspect they figure that after a short time the nations putting on the sanctions will come crawling back with their tails between their legs, seeking new contracts and profits. That has been the Pharaohs’ experience after their previous atrocities, why should they not expect it again?
Either the Pharaohs of Tehran will be overthrown, preferably by the Iranians since they put these maniacs in power in the first place, or there will be a war. If we do not wage a preemptive war against vicious tyrants who want to commit genocide they will start one at a time of their own convenience, possibly starting with multiple nuclear terrorist attacks on the US, Britain, and Israel. If the Iranians don’t overthrow them before that happens they will be fried in the nuke exchange. They must act now, for their own sakes.