Slate Dismisses Ahmadinejad’s 'Goofy' Letter

Slate Dismisses Ahmadinejad’s “Goofy” Letter
Friday May 12th 2006, 8:42 am

According to Fred Kaplan, writing for Slate, Ahmadinejad’s letter “is a bizarre document” and Condi Rice “is right to say that it fails to address any of the issues on the table,” that is to say “issues” put on the “table” by the neocons, a small number of Muslim-hating fanatics in the process of devising excuses to invade or at least bomb the heck out of Iran.

As Hassan Rohani, representative of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khameini, writes (and Time Magazine publishes, remarkably), the “issue” was manufactured by the United States and Israel. Iran is fully within its right, according to the fine type of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to develop nuclear energy. “Iran is prepared to work with the IAEA and all states concerned about promoting confidence in its fuel cycle program. But Iran cannot be expected to give in to United States’ bullying and non-proliferation double standards,” writes Rohani. Kaplan buys into the neocon generated “sensationalism and war mongering,” as Rohani characterizes it, and references a War Street Journal, er Wall Street Journal, op-ed “likening [the Ahmadinejad] letter’s philosophical depth to that of the Unabomber’s soliloquies.”

Thus, once again, we realize there is little difference between so-called “liberals” and “conservatives,” or rather neocons. Ahmadinejad’s letter is crazy because he has impertinence to tell the truth. “The brave and faithful people of Iran too have many questions and grievances, including: the coup d’etat of 1953 and the subsequent toppling of the legal government of the day, opposition to the Islamic revolution, transformation of an Embassy into a headquarters supporting the activities of those opposing the Islamic Republic (many thousands of pages of documents corroborate this claim), support for Saddam in the war waged against Iran, the shooting down of the Iranian passenger plane, freezing the assets of the Iranian nation, increasing threats, anger and displeasure vis-a-vis the scientific and nuclear progress of the Iranian nation (just when all Iranians are jubilant and celebrating their country’s progress), and many other grievances that I will not refer to in this letter.” How dare Ahmadinejad make mention of these historical facts. Obviously, Ahmadinejad is unhinged, a regular Ted Kaczynski.

As a neocon apologist, Mr. Kaplan expects us to believe that the “crewmen on the USS Vincennes” innocently “mistook the [Iranian] Airbus for an incoming F-14 fighter,” as if U.S. Navy Captain Will C. Rogers III’s crew lacked the ability to tell the difference between a commercial airbus and a fighter jet. Kaplan does not bother to repeat the lame excuses offered by the U.S. that “the aircraft was outside the commercial jet flight corridor, flying at only 7,000 feet, and on a descent toward the Vincennes,” as the History Channel describes it, although a month later, after the sensationalism (and public attention) waned, the U.S. “admitted that both the Vincennes and the airbus had been within a recognized commercial flightpath, and that the Iranian jet was flying at 12,000 feet and not descending.” Of course, Mr. Kaplan would probably not compare Captain Will C. Rogers III to Ted Kaczynski (Rogers killed 290 people, Kaczynski only three).

Kaplan does not bother to mention Ahmadinejad’s assertion that September 11 could not have been “planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services—or their extensive infiltration,” but then such declarations are verboten in the corporate media, and rest assured Slate is part of the corporate media (in fact, it is owned by the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post). More than a few have pointed out the obvious—it is was impossible for a band of cave-dwelling Muslims in one of the most backward countries on earth to pull off nine eleven—most notably Andreas von Bülow, former state-secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Defense who served on a parliamentary committee on intelligence services. Andreas von Bülow knows more than Kaplan or the pundits at Fox News about the feasibility of such matters (Fred Barnes, executive editor of the neocon house organ the Weekly Standard, from his bully pulpit at Fox, declared Ahmadinejad’s letter “reads … [like] some left-wing document,” while the churlish ignoramus John Gibson compared the letter to “Democrat talking point[s]”). Of course, we shouldn’t expect Fox News or CBS and Slate for that matter to admit the obvious and instead pedal the Bushzarro world version of events. Only Arabs and Europeans, as Kaplan makes certain to note, put any legitimacy in Ahmadinejad’s letter, a sort of abridged version of the Unabomber Manifesto.

Finally, for Kaplan and the gatekeeper liberals in the corporate and much of the alternative media, the problem is not the neocon agenda, well-documented, for total war against Islam, but rather that Ahmadinejad and Bush are “two of the world’s most stubborn, self-righteous leaders” and instead of brushing off Ahmadinejad’s “goofy letter,” Bush should engage the Iranians in “comprehensive talks,” a suggestion at odds with reality (and the objectives of the neocon agenda), thus demonstrating that Fred Kaplan should be writing about high school football games in Emporia, Kansas, and not dispensing his malarkey on Slate (possibly the CIA’s favorite website), where “liberals” essentially spin stale excuses for impending mass murder committed by people who make Ted Kaczynski look like a piker.

Addendum

I neglected to mention the most important point made by Ahmadinejad: Iran has never attacked the United States, although the latter has attacked the former, as any serious student of history (not brainwashed by Fox News propaganda) realizes. In 1953, the CIA sponsored and orchestrated the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mossadeq. Obviously, I have mentioned this many times and no doubt I now resemble a record skipping over the same groove repeatedly. Regardless, this fact figures prominently in Iran’s argument and should not be glossed over—or, as in the case of Kaplan and the neocons, relegated to the memory hole.


see also:

"Iran’s president Ahmadinejad never said Israel should be “wiped off the map,” although Shimon Peres did say “the president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map.” As Anneliese Fikentscher and Andreas Neumann note, Ahmadinejad was deliberately misquoted as part of an ongoing propaganda campaign against Iran by the neocons, in particular the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), founded by Yigal Carmon, who served time in Israeli military intelligence, and Meyrav Wurmser, a neocon that had a hand in crafting the neocon document “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”..."


http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=363

and

"For sometime now I have been thinking, how one can justify the undeniable contradictions that exist in the international arena -- which are being constantly debated, especially in political forums and amongst university students.... Young people, university students, and ordinary people have many questions about the phenomenon of Israel. I am sure you are familiar with some of them.... am sure you know how -- and at what cost -- Israel was established: - Many thousands were killed in the process.- Millions of indigenous people were made refugees....This tragedy is not exclusive to the time of establishment; unfortunately it has been ongoing for sixty years now. A regime has been established which does not show mercy even to kids, destroys houses while the occupants are still in them, announces before hand its list and plans to assassinate Palestinian figures, and keeps thousands of Palestinians in prison. Such a phenomenon is unique -- or at the very least extremely rare -- in recent memory.... The people will scrutinize our presidencies. Did we (manage) to bring peace, security and prosperity for the people or insecurity and unemployment? Did we intend to establish justice or just supported (special) interest groups, and by forcing many people to live in poverty and hardship, made a few people rich and powerful -- thus trading the approval of the people and the almighty with theirs? Did we defend the rights of the underprivileged or ignore them? Did we defend the rights of all people around t he world or imposed wars on them, interfered illegally in their affairs, established hellish prisons and incarcerated some of them? Did we bring the world peace and security or raised the specter of intimidation and threats? " -- Mahmood Ahmadi-Nejad

http://www.iribnews.ir/Full_en.asp?news_id=212909&n=1

or

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_2607.shtml
or

http://ender.indymedia.org/?q=node/32

or

http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/50042.php

and


I think Nasrallah has a reasoned argument and persuasive argument that they should be in the hands of Hezbollah (the arms) as a deterrent to potential aggression, and there is plenty of background reasons for that. So until, I think his position reporting it correctly and it seems to me reasonable position, is that until there is a general political settlement in the region, the threat of aggression and violence is reduced or eliminated there has to be a deterrent, and the Lebanese army can't be a deterrent." -- Noam Chomsky

http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/50040.php

or

http://www.almanar.com.lb/story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=649568


and


...Israelis have already celebrated with barbecues and parties. And so they should, for they've pulled off an amazing stunt: the creation of a state for one people on the land of another - and at their massive expense - without incurring effective sanction....Growing up in Britain, I... kept being told about the need to give Jews a state they could feel safe in. But at whose expense was this generosity? We Palestinians had no hand in the Holocaust, nor in persecuting Jews. But we were transformed from a peaceable agrarian people into a nation of beggars ...and second-class citizens of Israel.... -- Ghada Karmi -- "Where is the global outcry at this continuing cruelty?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1774765,00.html


or

http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/50045.php

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=365