http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10460807 Or this from DrudgeReport.com: Iran, West head for confrontation Wed Dec 14 2005 09:34:38 ET By repeatedly calling for Israel's destruction and slamming the door on a nuclear compromise, Iran's hardline president has put Tehran on a collision course with the West, diplomats and analysts warned, AFP reports. In his latest anti-Israeli assault, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the Holocaust as a "myth" and said the Jewish state should be moved as far away as Alaska -- views that one European envoy posted in Tehran described as "way beyond political incorrectness". "At first, we were tempted to put it down to inexperience or a simple gaffe," he said of the firebrand president's string of outbursts, which began in October with a call for Israel to be "wiped off the map". "But there is now a clear pattern of confrontational, extremist rhetoric apparently designed to upset the international community. And he's succeeding," said the European diplomat, who asked not to be named. According to the diplomat, "the very radical change of tone in Iran has to be seen in the context of the nuclear issue" -- or fears that Iran is using an atomic energy drive as a cover for weapons development. "This kind of talk from the president is not confidence-building, this is confidence destroying. It undermines all the diplomatic efforts to find a mutually satisfactory compromise on a very serious issue. You can't help but feel pessimistic." Too many other comments to list, but this guy gives the word "raghead"a bad name. swhitebull - "The Holocaust didn't happen; that's why we have to do it right this time." Current level of Iranian Statecraft.

Maybe it's better to see him like a puppet complete with strings that are pulled by the mullahs. He's there for the public view as a distraction, I wonder what the mullahs are doing behind the scenes. Why would they choose such an idiot, surely they would know of more refined methods to operate in public? Maybe they're really losing their grip and out of desperation feel forced to use such a clown to keep things under control?

Not at all - in all sincerity your reasoning is incorrect. You are using Western logic. ex: "Don't these fools in Iran know that if they are trying to develop a viable, deliverable nuclear arsenal they need to behave more like the Chinese, putting on a pleasant face while scheming behind the curtain?" And that's just where it is: everytime Iran does something shocking, all the West says to themselves "ok now they will have to moderate this position, a face-saving (for the WEST) retraction must be made for our public's consumption even if it is insincere." Instead, the Iranians always reinforce their outrageous position more vigorously. This is our last chance. Either we stop these maniacal gangsters now or we submit ourselves to their nuclear mercies. For the world has never known the convergence of such acute radicalism and the bomb. The West should have seen this coming. No American president, from the incompetent fool Carter, through even Reagan, and especially GW Bush has had the courage or wisdowm to deal the death blow to the Iranian radical regime. Even now I fear, with the Iranians openly declaring their desire to destroy Israel, the US, and the entire West, and with America's full knowledge of the Iranian intent to develop nuclear weapons and make this not a tool to deter agression but as a dagger to thrust into the hearts of infidels, EVEN NOW I do not believe that the US has the will or the stomach to stop Iran. I firmly believe that these are the seeds of the Apocalypse.

If Iran did use the bomb the response would be obvious. Iran would no longer exist.

"If Iran did use the bomb the response would be obvious. Iran would no longer exist." That's assuming they use it overtly or that we could trace the weapon.

Because he "mispoke" and was misunderstood: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/16/D8EHBEG80.html swhitebull - must have been a Howard Dean moment

from Debka, with a grain of salt: Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, echoed by the ayatollahs, persists in making outrageous hate statements, directed mainly at Israel. His latest called the Holocaust a myth and proposed the Jews be resettled in Europe or Alaska - two months after he was condemned worldwide for saying Israel should be wiped off the map. These statements aggravate tensions in the West – especially around Iran’s nuclear intentions. But the stream of hate continues to issue from Tehran in the face of the European summit’s threat of UN sanctions Friday, Dec. 16, for its president’s “unacceptable” statements and the West’s growing impatience with diplomacy for halting Iran’s advance towards a nuclear weapon. US secretary of state Condoleezza said she sees “no evidence that Iran is interested in a deal that is going to be acceptable to an international community that is extremely skeptical of what the Iranians are up to.” At home too, Iran’s rulers are bent on generating a sense of high crisis and menace. Their methods were described exclusively in DEBKA-Net-Weekly 233 on Dec. 9. A sort of collective delusional hysteria is sweeping the Iranian populace, induced by the Islamic republic’s extremist clerical rulers for reasons of their own. Wonder and hate are invoked by fake miracles and myths, demons and monsters. The president seems bent on portraying himself as a charmed figure. On a visit to one of the elite ten grand ayatollahs of the regime, Javadi-Amoli, in Qom this week, Ahmadinejad came out with this rigmarole: “When I addressed the UN General Assembly, a dazzling aura formed around my head. This I learned from one of the heads of state listening to my speech. He told me that they were all sitting at the edge of their seats to drink in the message from our Islamic regime. That was in September. In mid-October, Ahmadinejad suddenly ordered a well in northern Iraq to be declared the sacred gate to the tunnel leading to the Shiite Messiah – Mahdi in Arabic, Emam-e Zaman in Farsi. The faithful were encouraged to toss notes into the pit bearing their secret wishes, and a set of lavish mosques, hotels and restaurants ordered built around the magic shrine to accommodate hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. The Islamic regime in Tehran was declared the guardian of this holy place. To further charge the atmosphere, a miraculous dog was fabricated to star in a pious film circulated in hundreds of thousands of copies in Tehran. The dog was shown bowing at the tomb of the eighth Shiite Imam Reza in the northeastern town of Mashad, before climbing atop the marble edifice and bursting into canine tears. The episode caused great excitement and was widely covered in Iran’s media - until a coolheaded cleric reminded the dog-worshippers that Islam regards dogs as unclean creatures. The episode was then exposed as a fraud concocted by a film director who had trained his dog for the part. Amid these absurd episodes, ayatollahs at the head of government have begun spouting the grossest form of hate rhetoric heard even in Tehran to demonize all of Iran’s opponents and Western infidels in particular. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, chairman of the Council for Preserving the Constitution, declared that only Shiites were human beings and the rest of the world’s inhabitants were corrupt animals fit only to be destroyed. Non-Muslims, he said, were evil monsters which defiled the planet earth. These words aroused anger even in Iran, especially among minorities. The Zoroastrian leader demanded an immediate retraction and apology. However there was more to come. The director of Friday sermons in Qom, Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, last Friday described the United States and Britain as cancerous growths that destroy any country they penetrate and must be rooted out. (This Friday, Dec. 16, the same Meshkini said Ahmadinejad’s comment denying the Holocaust is completely logical and what all Iranians think. He was addressing Friday worshippers at the Qom religious center. Meshkeni is the powerful chairman of the Assembly of Experts which oversees supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.) Ayatollah Mohamad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, the president’s religious mentor, told his congregation: “Shiites must avoid contact with their enemies, even if they are on the point of death. Never ask a non-Shiite for bread.” No doubt impressed by Michael Jackson’s song in praise of Islam, Yazdi produced a grandiose plan for dispatching 5,000 missionaries to the United States to spread the true faith. It goes without saying that each of these “missionaries” would form a center for recruiting and training “martyrs” for killing infidels. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iran experts recall that in the 1980s, the founder of the Islamic republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini resorted extensively to pious and religious symbolism to invoke a sense of menace and electric anticipation in the country. His purpose was to galvani

I am appalled at the time the diplomacy is happening concerning Iran. The diplomats should be screaming at the top of their lungs on what is happening with Iran. Sanctions need to be placed on this country immediately. Furthermore, Iran needs to be suspended by the UN. Lets Roll

"I am appalled at the time the diplomacy is happening concerning Iran. The diplomats should be screaming at the top of their lungs on what is happening with Iran. Sanctions need to be placed on this country immediately. Furthermore, Iran needs to be suspended by the UN." A quiet knife in the back of some mullahs would also be ok by me.

You know, it is funny you mention the domestic situation in Iran. I would like to point out that the predominant viewpoint of the US government and specifically the Bush Administration's Department of State has been that Iran was a country on the verge of democratic revolution similar to that of Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, and that a popular counterevolution by the Iranian public at large was not only inevitable, but imminent. The US was saying this nonsense even as moderates were barred from running in Iranian elections, the Islamist Basij expanded, and while acknowledging that the Iranian nuclear program is one of the few government initiative the Iranian people themselves enthusiastically support. So clearly these people in our US government have behaved like the fools of all fools, and this during a supposedly "warmongering" Administration. It is all eerily Orwellian, since the truth was readily apparent for even a schoolgirl to behold. And now it is upon these dubious characters, who have been wrong about EVERYTHING, the American people must rely on to solve the Iranian nuclear crisis. I am preparing for anything. No I do not believe that Iran is going to overtly launch a nuclear attack on the US. But I am certain that once they deploy their first nuclear weapons they will seek to maximize the price of oil, incrementally blackmail the US out of the Middle East, foment Islamic terrorism to a greater degree worldwide, and they are A PROLIFERATION RISK to the nth degree. A nuclear Iran will inevitably lead to nuclear terrorism. At this point, kiss America as you know it goodbye. Freedom-wise, that is. Iran must be stopped now. If it takes a preemptive nuclear strike, if it takes atomizing Tehran, if it takes destroying all Iranian oilfields and paying $12 a gallon for gas for 2 years, Iran must be stopped. Iran should always have been the ultimate target of regime change for the War on Terror. GW Bush has failed the nation for failing to take down the world's #1 terrorist state. Don't forget he does nothing while Syrian and Iranian overt assistance and support for the terrorists kills my countrymen. ==flips the bird==