Iran reaches out to U.S.: Probably Bush will flash them the bird
I'll take odds that you won't see this news prominently displayed in the U.S. mainstream media:
Oh yeah, I remember, we don't negotiate with terrorists.
So, let's have a nice quick war with them, just like we did with Iraq.
Update: I'll have to eat my hat on one prediction here. The AP does have this story up on its wires. Just how widely it will be picked up, who knows? Meanwhile Steve Clemons sees some hope here:
I'm not counting the chickens yet though. As Clemons points out, what Bush really wants in Iran is regime change. Bush will probably think talking to the mullahs would tend to solidify their rule.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has written to the US president to "propose new ways" to resolve tensions between the two arch enemies, Tehran announced on Monday.For some reason, our press doesn't want the public to know that Iran has repeatedly reached out to the US to try to start diplomatic negotiations, but the Bush administration refuses to talk to them.
"President Ahmadinejad has written a letter to George Bush, which is to be handed to the Swiss embassy," Gholam Hossein Elham, an Iranian government spokesman, told reporters.
It is the first time an Iranian president has been known to officially communicate with an American president since Washington and Tehran cut diplomatic relations in 1980.
"In this letter, while analysing the world situation and finding the roots of the problems, he has proposed new ways for getting out of the existing vulnerable world situation," the spokesman said.
Hamid Reza Asefi, the foreign ministry spokesman, told the ISNA news agency that "once the American president has received the letter, its content will be made public".
Oh yeah, I remember, we don't negotiate with terrorists.
So, let's have a nice quick war with them, just like we did with Iraq.
Update: I'll have to eat my hat on one prediction here. The AP does have this story up on its wires. Just how widely it will be picked up, who knows? Meanwhile Steve Clemons sees some hope here:
If Bush responds, perhaps we have a stunning breakthough in the style if not the substance of interaction between the U.S. and Iran.
I'm not counting the chickens yet though. As Clemons points out, what Bush really wants in Iran is regime change. Bush will probably think talking to the mullahs would tend to solidify their rule.
posted by walldon | 9:18 AM
1 Comments:
Hi, I do agree with you. Here is a very informative news article.
Best Regards,
Youssef
http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=3339
Global Views
Ahmadinejad: Lost in Translation
By Little Red
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
It was October last year when we came home, flicked on the radio and listened aghast to the news that the Iranian president denied the Holocaust had happened and said the state of Israel should be wiped off the map. Christ, we thought, this nut jobs playing into their hands with this kind of rhetoric. Since then the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion as one US academic has described the Iran/US imbroglio has ratcheted up to high alert with Seymour Hersch of the New Yorker reporting that the White House is all prepared for nuclear strikes.
It would take just 12 hours to deploy nuclear weapons for a bunker busting strike that would kill a million Iranians according to conservative estimates commissioned by the Pentagon. Nuclear armed planes are now on constant alert and public opinion has been framed around those mad, mad statements on Israel by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
But what if the pronouncements by Ahmadinejad that cast him as this seasons baddie incarnate had been a) mistranslated and b) taken out of context?
When properly translated the Iranian president actually calls for the removal of the regimes that are in power in Israel and in the USA as a goal for the future. Nowhere does he demand the elimination or annihilation of Israel. He called for greater governance for Palestine. The word map does not even feature. And the president makes plain that the Holocaust happened, but, he argues western powers have exploited the memory of the Holocaust for their own imperialistic purposes. What the mainstream ran with is complete deception.
The deception has been aided by the fact that much of the media use an independent company called Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri) for translating Middle Eastern languages. Memri just happens to be owned by two right-wing neo-con Israelis: Meyrav Wurmser, the wife of one of Dick Cheneys aides (and ex-special assistant to
Strap-on John Bolton), David Wurmser and former(?) Israeli Military Intelligence officer, Colonel Yigal Carmon. Indeed a look at Wikipedia s incomplete staff list seems to suggest a heavy Israeli bias in staffing and at least two more ex-Israeli Military Intelligence people. Still the little red email is sure thats just a coincidence, as is the fact that the Israeli army (presumably military intelligence) has also used this mistranslation tactic in the past.
And once Ahmadinejad had been brushed with the wacko Jew destroyer tag, it was a short hop, skip and ein Sprung before he was alongside Adolf Hitler in the pantheon of baddies. Like Milosevic and Hussein before him, Ahmadinejads Hitler comparison is as sure a sign war is
imminent.
Unlike Hitler though Ahmadinejad doesnt rule Iran, nor does he control its foreign or military policy. The man in charge of all that is Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran is a theocracy, and Khamenei is the theocrat-in-chief. To give you an idea of where Ahmadinejad lies in Irans political hierarchy, note that no one can even run for the presidency in the first place without the approval of Khamenei and the Guardian Council, a group of six clerics and six conservative jurists that are selected by Khamenei.
Ahmadinejad serves the purpose of being a believable bogeyman. Hell find his Ph.D. in civil engineering and being a founding member of the Iran Tunnel Society useful if Seymour Herschs bunker-busting nuke allegations come true.
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