Iran's Ahmadinejad, Information Pariah
Wall Street Journal / L. GORDON CROVITZ
26-Sep-2010 (2 comments)

He told Larry King on CNN, "In Iran, nobody is in prison because of participating in protests. Nobody went to prison because of participating in protests. Protests are free."

He told a group of journalists over breakfast that no one had better try to stop him from building the nuclear bomb he's not building: "The U.S. has never entered a real war, not in Vietnam, nor in Afghanistan, nor even World War II." He flatly denied to Christiane Amanpour on ABC the well-documented sentencing of Iranian woman Sakineh Ashtiani to death by stoning for adultery.

Ahmadinejad relishes his role as provocateur. This plays well with the ayatollahs who helped him steal the election in June 2009. But in an era when we expect transparency from political leaders, we seem unsure how to handle one who simply lies about his abuses at home and intentions abroad.

A leader who mocks all questions is thumbing his nose at core beliefs of our era, including that information wants to flow freely and that no one is above this law of increasing openness. What to do with an information pariah?

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No Fear

Nojan,

by No Fear on Mon Sep 27, 2010 11:37 AM PDT

Speeches at annual UN meetings by the heads of states are usually meant for their internal politics.

No other president in our history has tried harder than Ahmadinejad to open dialogue with presidents and the media on all issues and he has shown that he is not affraid of the tough questions. But when you are encountered with the same old questions over and over again, specially when you answered them before , you get the message that US politicians are not interested in a talk with you. Hillary Clinton's latest support of the green leaders in Iran was also very crucial.

So, Ahmadinejad came out and gave US administration a gift in return. Question them on 9/11. Bring up their prisoners issue. expose their hypocracy...

But most importantly, what Ahmadinejad did in his latest New york trip was to appease the traditional conservatives in Iran. He defended the old conservative outlook at his latest UN meetings. This was definitely a sign of some sort of agreements between the traditional conservatives  ( Larijani / Khamenie ) and the Ahmadinejad faction. The news from Iran supports my case since conservative critics of Ahmadinejad are now praising him publicly. The fact that the stoning verdict was also postponded, also supports my case since the judiciary in under the conservatives control.

This is a step back from what i expect Ahmadinejad to do, but as a politician, you have to form certain alliances short or long terms some point in your political life.

I personally was hoping Ahmadinejad follow the same speech at the UN which he recently did when praising Cyrus Cylinder. But that would have probably caused a huge embarresment by the judiciary in the case of Sakineh Mohammadi.

Do you follow?


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nojanthegreat

WSJ reports

by nojanthegreat on Mon Sep 27, 2010 11:11 AM PDT

When Rupert murdak bought wall street journals for big chunk of money , I was surprised .

WSJ has done a lot of reporting and ….. On Iran and ahmadinejad with the fox news kind of attitude.

AN is partly right on something here , first USA army have never been in true all out wars , (even in case of WW2 ) .

There is narrow chance of war between Iran and USA or even ISRAEL in coming days and years with is pretty normal ( they are possibility of war with china and EU or Russia and well).

And they are a lot of American who believe that 9/11 was an inside job . Lots of reports and research have been done in this case , the fact that he ask for an independent report commute in UN to search for fact on this issue is an great attempt to answer some un answered questions related to war on terror and ………

And “Ahmadinejad relishes his role as provocateur. This plays well with the ayatollahs who helped him steal the election in June 2009. But in an era when we expect transparency from political leaders, we seem unsure how to handle one who simply lies about his abuses at home and intentions abroad.” really ?

Steal the election ? Is this the work of known international newspaper ? Did bush steal the election in 2000 ? And 2004 ? Did we call it that ? Any report on that or its always easy to accuse others when we don’t have any evidence to back it up .


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