Iran's president questions Holocaust
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sonnylax
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 Posted: 12/08/05 - 15:45 Post subject: Iran's president questions Holocaust
And to think these guys are quite possibly a few gum wrappers away from have a few nukes. 
Do any of you think we shouldn't target Iran next? Or shall we just wait for another 9/11 style attack on American soil?
| Quote: | Iran's president questions Holocaust
Thu Dec 8, 2005 12:12 PM ET
By Paul Hughes
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday expressed doubt that the Holocaust occurred and suggested Israel be moved to Europe.
His comments, reported by Iran's official IRNA news agency from a news conference he gave in the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca, follow his call in October for Israel to be "wiped off the map", which sparked widespread international condemnation.
"Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that they condemn that person and throw them in jail," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
"Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the Europeans is: is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem?" he said.
"If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe -- like in Germany, Austria or other countries -- to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe and we will support it."
Historians say six million Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. Ahmadinejad's remarks drew swift rebukes from Israel and Washington.
Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said in Tel Aviv that Ahmadinejad was voicing "the consensus that exists in many circles in the Arab world that the Jewish people ... do not have the right to establish a Jewish, democratic state in their ancestral homeland".
"Just to remind Mr. Ahmadinejad, we've been here long before his ancestors were here," Gissin said. "Therefore, we have a birthright to be here in the land of our forefathers and to live here. Thank God we have the capability to deter and to prevent such a statement from becoming a reality."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "It just further underscores our concerns about the regime in Iran and it's all the more reason why it's so important that the regime not have the ability to develop nuclear weapons." |
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robp
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Posted: 12/08/05 - 16:13 Post subject:
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "It just further underscores our concerns about the regime in Iran and it's all the more reason why it's so important that the regime not have the ability to develop nuclear weapons."
That might be the understatement of the year.
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HYPERASHEL
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Posted: 12/08/05 - 16:31 Post subject:
i wonder why the Muslims feel that Jerusalem and the area is thiers? I mean Mohammed and Muslims did not form for centuries afterwards of Christ's appearance there. just by that rule the priority of "occupation" would be the Jews, the Christains and then the Muslims. ever since the Arab world got thier collective azzes kicked in the first Crusade they have had a hatred. after they won the second Crusade they feel it's thiers.
They also forget that the Christians killed the jews in the Crusades as well, the jews were also considered pagan by thier lack of beleif in Christ.
thankfully it's not the majority of Muslims that hold these beliefs. another area that could really benefit from, "can't we just get along?"
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thegman
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Posted: 12/08/05 - 17:12 Post subject: Re: Iran's president questions Holocaust
| sonnylax wrote: |
Do any of you think we shouldn't target Iran next? Or shall we just wait for another 9/11 style attack on American soil?
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I'll answer your question with a question: Don't you think Israel will act before we will?
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sonnylax
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Posted: 12/08/05 - 17:20 Post subject: Re: Iran's president questions Holocaust
| thegman wrote: | | sonnylax wrote: |
Do any of you think we shouldn't target Iran next? Or shall we just wait for another 9/11 style attack on American soil?
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I'll answer your question with a question: Don't you think Israel will act before we will? |
Good question. Obviously don't know that answer, but would guess that Israel would act first.
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Gogirlgo
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Posted: 12/09/05 - 11:50 Post subject: Re: Iran's president questions Holocaust
| sonnylax wrote: |
[b]Do any of you think we shouldn't target Iran next? |
Yep, I think we shouldn't have plans to target countries. Read your international law, Sonny, you can't invade and occupy other countries that haven't yet hurt yours. Preemptive war isn't something we should legitimize. We've done it in Iraq, that doesn't mean it should become the precedent for what we do in the future.
There have always been Jew-haters, there always will be. Doesn't give us the right to blow them off the earth.
What really concerns me is all the war-mongering. War is supposed to be the option of absolute last resort, not the first thing you try.
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airehead
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Posted: 12/09/05 - 11:57 Post subject: Re: Iran's president questions Holocaust
| Gogirlgo wrote: | | sonnylax wrote: |
Do any of you think we shouldn't target Iran next? |
Yep, I think we shouldn't have plans to target countries. Read your international law, Sonny, you can't invade and occupy other countries that haven't yet hurt yours. Preemptive war isn't something we should legitimize. We've done it in Iraq, that doesn't mean it should become the precedent for what we do in the future.
There have always been Jew-haters, there always will be. Doesn't give us the right to blow them off the earth.
What really concerns me is all the war-mongering. War is supposed to be the option of absolute last resort, not the first thing you try. |
Many, many military people agree with you G. In fact, many are ready for this war to be over. Yes, they want the job done, but at the same time, many thinking, feeling military members don't relish war or what it signifies. But, there is a time and a place.
There have been many Jew haters and it repulses me that this man is getting air time. I am just horrified that anyone would dare suggest the holocaust didn't happen.
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copteacher
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Posted: 12/11/05 - 03:18 Post subject:
War should always be the last resort. But the international community needs to be more firm and closely watch countries like Iran.
While I am not for just routinely invading without cause, it is like responding to crime after it occurs. The best police work is pre emptive, yet it gets the least credit. The police get lots of grief for the bank that gets robbed but when an officer prevents a crime that never occured it is often done with little fan fare.
The best premption is a big stick sometimes. Good diplomacy is not pacification of thugs.
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Gogirlgo
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Posted: 12/11/05 - 15:14 Post subject:
| rtpd113 wrote: | War should always be the last resort. But the international community needs to be more firm and closely watch countries like Iran.
While I am not for just routinely invading without cause, it is like responding to crime after it occurs. The best police work is pre emptive, yet it gets the least credit. The police get lots of grief for the bank that gets robbed but when an officer prevents a crime that never occured it is often done with little fan fare.
The best premption is a big stick sometimes. Good diplomacy is not pacification of thugs. |
Agreed. I just wrote a paper which in part questions the ability of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to effectively adjudicate b/c it's part of the OAS, which has as its agenda the independence of states within the Americas, and their cohesion and relationships. If there's no sanctioning mechanism for states that don't pay attention to the Court's rulings, or alternatively, opt to drop out of OAS and thus aren't beholden to the court, what's the point? Optional justice really shouldn't be an option.
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sonnylax
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Posted: 12/13/05 - 19:27 Post subject: But seriously folks, this clown is dangerous
That ball is way back, way back, way back... And it is gone!
| Quote: | But seriously folks, this clown is dangerous
BY MARK STEYN
SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Good news! On Thursday, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, who recently called for Israel to be wiped off the map, moderated his position. In a spirit of statesmanlike compromise, he now wants Israel wiped off the map of the Middle East and wiped on to the map of Europe.
"Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces," Ahmadinejad told Iranian TV viewers. "Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true," he added sportingly, "if European countries claim that they have killed Jews in World War II, why don't they provide the Zionist regime with a piece of Europe? Germany and Austria can provide the regime with two or three provinces for this regime to establish itself, and the issue will be resolved. You offer part of Europe, and we will support it."
Big of you. It's the perfect solution to the "Middle East peace process": out of sight, out of mind. And given that Ahmadinejad's out of his mind, we're already halfway there.
So let's see: We have a Holocaust denier who wants to relocate an entire nation to another continent, and he happens to be head of the world's newest nuclear state. (They're not 100 percent fully-fledged operational, but happily for them they can drag out the pseudo-negotiations with the European Union until they are. And Washington certainly won't do anything, because after all if we're not 100 percent certain they've got WMD -- which we won't be until there's a big smoking crater live on CNN one afternoon -- it would be just another Bushitlerburton lie to get us into another war for oil, right?)
So how does the United States react? Well, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that the comments of Ahmadinejad "further underscore our concerns about the regime."
Really? But wait, the world's superpower wasn't done yet. The State Department moved to a two-adjective alert and described Ahmadinejad's remarks as "appalling" and "reprehensible." "They certainly don't inspire hope among any of us in the international community that the government of Iran is prepared to engage as a responsible member of that community," said spokesman Adam Ereli.
You don't say. Ahmadinejad was speaking in the holy city of Mecca, head office of the "religion of peace," during a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. There were fiftysomething other heads of government in town. How many do you think took their Iranian colleague to task?
Well, what's new? But, that being so, it would be heartening if the rest of the world could muster a serious response to the guy. How one pines for a plain-spoken tell-it-like-it-is fellow like, say, former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali? As he memorably said of Iran, "It's a totalitarian regime." Oh, no, wait. He said that about the United States. On Iran, he's as impeccably circumspect and discreet as the State Department.
"Diplomatic" language is one of the last holdovers of the pre-democratic age. It belongs to a time when international relations were conducted exclusively between a handful of eminent representatives of European dynasties. Today it's all out in the open -- President Ahmaddasanatta proposed his not-quite-final solution for Israel on TV. McLellan and Ereli likewise gave their response on TV. So the language of international relations is no longer merely the private code of diplomats but part of the public discourse -- and, if the government of the United States learns anything from the last four years, it surely ought to be that there's a price to be paid for not waging the war as effectively in the psychological arenas as in the military one. What does it mean when one party can talk repeatedly about the liquidation of an entire nation and the other party responds that this further "underscores our concerns," as if he'd been listening to an EU trade representative propose increasing some tariff by half a percent?
Well, it emboldens the bully. It gives him an advantage, like the punk who swears and sprawls over half the seats in the subway car while the other riders try not to catch his eye. The political thugs certainly understand the power of psychological intimidation. Look at Saddam Hussein in court, so confident in his sneering dismissal of judge and witnesses that he's generating big pro-Baathist demonstrations in Tikrit. I was struck by his complaint that the real terrorism was that he hadn't been given a change in underpants in three days. I hope that's true. It requires enormous strength of will on the part of free societies to bring blustering cocksure thugs down to size, even after we've overthrown them and kicked them out of the presidential palace. In Iran, President Ahmaddamytree figures that half the world likes his Jew proposals and the rest isn't prepared to do more than offer a few objections phrased in the usual thin diplo-pabulum.
We assume, as Neville Chamberlain, Lord Halifax and other civilized men did 70 years ago, that these chaps may be a little excitable, but come on, old boy, they can't possibly mean it, can they? Wrong. They mean it but they can't quite do it yet. Like Hitler, when they can do it, they will -- or at the very least the weedy diplo-speak tells them they can force the world into big concessions on the fear that they can.
Look at the broader picture. The State Department's Ereli noted that President Ahmageddon's comments appear "to be a consistent pattern of rhetoric that is both hostile and out of touch with values that the rest of us in the international community live by."
Is that even true? That the Iranian president is "out of touch" with the "values" of the "international community?" The Hudson Institute's lively "Eye On The U.N." Web site had an interesting photograph of how the "international community" marked Nov. 29 -- the annual "International Day Of Solidarity With The Palestinian People." Kofi Annan and other bigwigs sat on a platform with a map flanked by the "Palestinian" and U.N. flags. The map showed Palestine but no Israel. The U.N., in other words, has done cartographically what Iran wants to do in more incendiary fashion: It's wiped Israel off the map.
There has always been a slightly post-modern quality to sovereignty in the transnational age: We pretend the Syrian foreign minister is no different from the New Zealand foreign minister, and in so doing we vastly inflate the status of the former at the expense of the latter. But with Ahmadinejad we're going way beyond that. If a genocidal fantasist is acceptable in polite society, we'll soon find ourselves dealing with a genocidal realist. |
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jrjo
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Posted: 12/14/05 - 11:26 Post subject: Re: Iran's president questions Holocaust
| Gogirlgo wrote: | | Sonny, you can't invade and occupy other countries that haven't yet hurt yours. |
There's a big hole in Manhattan you should see. That's where the 'hurt' was and countries harboring terrorists have been told the consequences.
/how soon they forget
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HYPERASHEL
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Posted: 12/14/05 - 11:45 Post subject: Re: Iran's president questions Holocaust
| jrjo wrote: | | Gogirlgo wrote: | | Sonny, you can't invade and occupy other countries that haven't yet hurt yours. |
There's a big hole in Manhattan you should see. That's where the 'hurt' was and countries harboring terrorists have been told the consequences.
/how soon they forget |
but that was not cuased by Iran. it was caused by a group of people with the same beliefs with no international border.
that's like saying if you arrest every Italian organized crime will cease too. you can't go after everyone that does not beleive in your own personal belief, relgeon. that mentality is exactly the way to start a war.
(note i am partially itialin and only using this as a stereotype example, i have nothing against the italians.)
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jrjo
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Posted: 12/14/05 - 11:54 Post subject: Re: Iran's president questions Holocaust
| HYPERASHEL wrote: | | jrjo wrote: | | Gogirlgo wrote: | | Sonny, you can't invade and occupy other countries that haven't yet hurt yours. |
There's a big hole in Manhattan you should see. That's where the 'hurt' was and countries harboring terrorists have been told the consequences.
/how soon they forget |
but that was not cuased by Iran. it was caused by a group of people with the same beliefs with no international border.
that's like saying if you arrest every Italian organized crime will cease too. you can't go after everyone that does not beleive in your own personal belief, relgeon. that mentality is exactly the way to start a war.
(note i am partially itialin and only using this as a stereotype example, i have nothing against the italians.) |
If a countries "personal beliefs" advocate harboring terrorists, I guess you're right then. But our commander in chief has issued the warning, no one should be surprised out there.
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Gogirlgo
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Posted: 12/14/05 - 22:41 Post subject: Re: Iran's president questions Holocaust
| jrjo wrote: | | Gogirlgo wrote: | | Sonny, you can't invade and occupy other countries that haven't yet hurt yours. |
There's a big hole in Manhattan you should see. That's where the 'hurt' was and countries harboring terrorists have been told the consequences.
/how soon they forget |
Memory Boy, reread our dialogue on 9/11 a few years back and tell me who forgot what. Then get back to the issue here.
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Thought Provoking
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Posted: 12/15/05 - 07:48 Post subject:
| Gogirlgo wrote: | | If there's no sanctioning mechanism for states that don't pay attention to the Court's rulings, or alternatively, opt to drop out of OAS and thus aren't beholden to the court, what's the point? Optional justice really shouldn't be an option. |
And international justice, save that which is backed up by force, is a fallacy, with more historical backing than you can shake a pointy head at.
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