...neither did the Holocaust, there are no gays in Iran, there is no nuclear weapons programme...etc...
Ahmadinejad shows off his comedy schtick!
Update 1: Actually, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency:
The September 11 attack on the US and collapse of twin towers were parts of complicated intelligence move to give enough excuses for them to prepare the ground for invasion of Afghanistan under pretext of fighting terrorism, he said.
The article is mostly about the arrest of Abdulmalek Rigi of Jundallah.
Thanks to Anonymous!
Update 2:Press TV also has the story:
The president described the September 11, 2001 destruction of the twin World Trade Center buildings in New York as a preconceived "scenario and a sophisticated intelligence measure" and emphasized that the 9/11 incident was a "big lie intended to serve as a pretext for fighting terrorism and setting the grounds for sending troops to Afghanistan."
"Depredation, bullying and killing the reality of humanity are the outcomes of the capitalist way of thinking," Ahmadinejad said on Saturday.
Update 3: As Marylander reminds us in the comments, Ahmadinejad's loony remarks are a far cry from the far more poignant reactions by many in Iran to the 9/11 attacks:
15 comments:
Ahmedinejad is no doubt a nutter but not that nutty. Something may have been lost in translation there. He doesn't say 9/11 "never happened", he says it is a "big fabrication". When put into context, he clearly meant to suggest there was a conspiracy afoot to make it happen: “The Sept. 11 incident was a big fabrication as a pretext for the campaign against terrorism and a prelude for staging an invasion against Afghanistan.” If he meant to say it "never happened", then he'd be claiming the twin towers were still standing there.
What is curious is that he doesn't mention the invasion of Iraq but then again that too might be because of insufficient space or translation.
IRNA has an article up saying: The September 11 attack on the US and collapse of twin towers were parts of complicated intelligence move to give enough excuses for them to prepare the ground for invasion of Afghanistan under pretext of fighting terrorism, he said.
Strangely, he also gives credence to the idea that "the war on terror" is actually about spreading democracy (!):
US aggression and NATO;s military operations in the region are aimed at saving liberal democracy and capitalism school of thought, he said.
Well, the extracts direct from the Iranian news sources clarifies it: there does not appear to be anything new or extraordinary in Ahmedinejad's comments regarding 9/11.
But his depiction of the war on terror as operations "aimed at saving liberal democracy and capitalism school of thought" is new to me. Perhaps, I am not too familiar with Ahmedinejad's rhetoric, but who is he actually trying to appeal to with such statements? His islamic conservative support base or western marxists?
But his depiction of the war on terror as operations "aimed at saving liberal democracy and capitalism school of thought" is new to me.
Me too. Some sneaky Zionist has probably switched his scripts. Instead of ranting that the Great Satan is invading the Middle East to suck up the oil, build gaspipelines and destroy Islam he accidentally ranted that the US, UK and Israel are fighting for liberal democracy!
Whoops! Own goal!
there does not appear to be anything new or extraordinary in Ahmedinejad's comments regarding 9/11.
Has he said this before?
And how come you're posting as "Anonymous". I thought I had changed the settings to prevent that and made it necessary to create a handle.
Would you mind putting in a name, even one you've just made up, or one that I'm already familiar with to keep me from getting confused?
Cheers, and welcome if you're new here.
Ah! Looks like Ahmadinejad had previously called 9/11 a
"suspicious event".
Not too bright when it comes to numbers of buildings or when the year 2001 was:
"Four or five years ago, a suspicious event occurred in New York. A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed but never published their names," Ahmadinejad told Iranians in the holy city of Qom.
What exactly were these people doing then?
What exactly were these people doing then?
Yeah. There were supposedly hundreds of thousands out on the streets of Tehran. And the "Death to America!" chants were given a rest as well that week.
Mark my words, history will regard not pursuing a rapprochement with Iran in 2003 as (among) the biggest mistake of the Bush Administration.
Now we have this nutcase in power. I know it's not our fault, but Bush's misinformed rhetoric went a long way to empower him.
Mark my words, history will regard not pursuing a rapprochement with Iran in 2003 as (among) the biggest mistake of the Bush Administration.
I agree. I thought it was a stupid and pointless slap in the face to start using the "Axis of Evil" rhetoric. I'm sure there are many Iranian dissidents who don't want the US to become cosy with the regime, though.
It's a difficult one though because what do most people, particularly on the hard-left, or adolescent left, criticize about the US's relationship with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and pre-1991 Iraq? Its good relations which it sees as supporting dictators. Actually, I agree that the US shouldn't support dictators. But then, what do many of the same hard-left/adolescent left criticize about the US's relationship with Cuba, Iran, North Korea and post-1991 Saddam-era Iraq? It's isolation of those dictatorial regimes.
I'm not attributing those beliefs to you though, Marylander.
Sorry, just to go back to your comments Marylander, I do agree with you that the Bush administration was wrong, with an almost astonishingly maladroit diplomacy by slapping Iran, in particular with the "Axis of Evil" slur. Iranians had previously turned out in droves to vote for the most reformist presidential candidate, Mohammad Khatami, that they could. He had been pushing for a policy of his own known as the Dialogue Among Civilizations the year that the 9/11 attacks happened. This would have been the perfect time for rapprochement, as you say.
Then again, some Iranian secularists believe that this kind of reformist (Khatami, Montazeri...etc...) are just window-dressing and wouldn't really give most of the Iranian people what they want.
Possibly, but I'm sure that bellicose words from the US had the effect of driving Iranians towards someone who painted himself a bellicose defender of the country and that's why they've ended up with the crackpot who's in charge now.
I'm not naive enough to think that if only we were nice to them, the Iranians would be cooperative. But I think there were several powerful forces working in favor of rapprochement. Iran is threatened by and opposed to the Salafi brand of Islamic ideology that motivates the likes of Bin Laden. We had a common enemy in Al Queda and in the Taliban. I seriously think that Bush was just too ignorant of the world to understand that there are different branches of Islam. I also think that people in his administration were arrogant and ideological enough to believe that after "liberating" Iraq we could move on to Iran, so any negotiation with the Islamic regime was pointless.
I consider myself something of a realist and one of the reasons why is that I think we should be negotiating and have diplomatic relations with all regimes no matter how reprehensible we find them. While I'm certainly no lefty, I think that the Bush administration put ideology before pragmatism, which is behavior I usually associate with the more liberal administrations.
Also I think the Mullahs were somewhat scared of us in 2003. We wiped out Saddam's army really quickly. We looked like we were invincible at that point. If they thought that the military force that just wiped out their most powerful enemy could, instead of being used against them, help to secure them, I think they would be singing a different tune.
Of course, the US can destroy any conventional military threat pretty quickly. It quickly became obvious that we were ill-prepared to deal with unconventional warfare and that's when I think Iran started to feel more emboldened. Combine that with the repeated snubs from us and our silly ideology and I think the moderates in Tehran lost all legitimacy.
Of course, even the Clinton Administration, who apologized for Operation Ajax, couldn't reestablish diplomatic relations with Iran while they had a more moderate government. So maybe it was impossible all along.
There I go forgetting to log out of my google account!
Another point I might add about the Iranians is that they are very very proud. They still feel like we humiliated them with the Shah and resent it. It could take more time before they're ready to forgive that. But on the other hand, most of Iranian society is too young to even remember the Shah. All they've ever known is Islamic rule. I think its pretty much impossible to predict how this will turn out. The one thing I think we can say for sure is that nothing, nothing will rally support for the mullahs more than American or Israeli military action against Iran.
The one thing I think we can say for sure is that nothing, nothing will rally support for the mullahs more than American or Israeli military action against Iran.
I also agree completely with this.
One day, maybe after Cheney or Rice publishes their memoirs, we will get an idea for how much conflict their really was within the administration. I get the impression that Cheney and Rumsfeld clashed with Rice quite a bit. I'm sure that most of his staff had at least a basic understanding of the ethnic dynamics in Iraq but it goes far beyond Sunni vs Shiia. There are all kinds of tribal loyalties that are probably too complex to have understood during Saddam's rule. I wouldn't want to suggest that Cheney or Rumsfeld would downplay these dynamics or mislead the president to fulfill their own agendas but... hey I'm a cynic!
I think the biggest split in the administration were between the Neocons and the old guard. The old guard consists of people like Gates, Brzezinski, James Baker, etc. They were usually running the foreign policy show no matter which party was in office. They're closely aligned with oil interests. I think Cheney used to be part of this camp but jumped to the neocon side after being radicalized by 9-11. Many of them are also what some refer to as "Arabists" meaning they're sympathetic to the Saudi Throne and the Arab side in the Israeli-Arab conflicts. The neocons, unlike the pragmatic old guard, wanted to spread democracy and destabilize the entire Middle East. Central to this goal was the plan to use Iraqi oil to flood oil markets and break up OPEC. This was unacceptable to Oil interests everywhere, be they American or Arab. Gates' appointment to Secretary of Defense was the final nail in the coffin of the neocons and the restoration of the old guard. And not a moment too soon in my opinion!
I know that's a vast over simplification but that's my interpretation of the Bush Administration. I love speculating wildly as much as the next guy!
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