uh, that should be “wipe out” …

Six and one half dozen of the other.

Bush’s rhetoric is eliminationist: He wants regime change in all three of those countries because they are “evil” and in the process of trying to achieve that in Iraq he just may have wiped that country off the map. We’ll just have to see how bad it gets.

Your attempt to draw some distinction on this point is totally moronic and it cuts the heart of why the right wing can’t be trusted to run our foreign policy.

When the president of Iran makes radical, irresponsible remarks, conservative hardliners in the US work themselves up into a lather about the “hitler of our time” and start calling for military strikes.

But when our President makes radical, incendiary remarks about other countries, by suggesting, for instance, that Iran is evil and that its regime must be removed, hardline conservatives in this country expect moderate reformers in Iran to suddenly rise up as if on cue to bring forth a new revolution and a full flowering of democracy.

In other words, they live in fantasy land.

Bush’s axis of evil speech and subsequent nvasion of the first country on the list, emboldened hardliners in Iran., just like Iranian rhetoric emboldens hardliners in the US. In Iran, the hardliners used Bush’s rhetoric to marginalize and discredit moderate voices of reform and dipomacy. Sound familiar?

You idiots seem to think that because we do our saber rattling in staid State of the Union speeches and polite Sunday morning talk shows that the rest of the world doesn’t see it as saber rattling. They do, especially in the countries so often bandied about as tragets for attack.

In terms of reaction, it doesn’t matter that Bush doesn’t want to wipe the “Iranian people.” The radical elements Iran still use his rhetoric to whip up nationalist, religious ferver anyway.

Radicals on both sides want and need enemies and rumors of war to maintain their power base. You don’t think Bush isn’t playing that game? You’re a fool.

My remark about the poor voting referred to statements made by Oliver over and over again, not any personal belief of mine.

While I’ve never heard of “Um Iraq”, Pres. Bush has never — not ever — suggested that North Korea or Iran should be “wiped off the map.”

And, as to what the US Government was up to with the Shah, that is either a red herring or a non sequitur, take your pick.

And I didn’t say Ahmedinejad was extremely powerful, you’re disagreeing with something I didn’t say. I did say he could hold that office for life at the whim of the Mullahs. Or, as someone else put it (remember who?): “Ahmedinejad’s position isn’t anywhere near Bush’s (not even symbolically).” [Yet, again, an example of a difference between the two, not a similarity. Thanks for reminding me.]

Finally, the “friendliest” interpretation of Ahmedinejad’s words I found was this:

And finally, the words saying that “the occupier regime of Al-Qods must wipe off the map” just mean the Zionist regime not Israeli and Jewish people

Nice fellow.

As for Pres. Bush holding Iraq hostage, that’s not even a good metaphor, let alone a fact.

I won’t make any remarks about your educating yourself. But I think I would try to understand, or at least question, a commenter, before I made such a lackluster attempt at debate.

fd’s characterization of the student revolutionaries who stormed the U.S. embassy in ‘79 is highly instructive. If they were “maniacs” for holding U.S. personnel hostage, then what was the U.S. government, which gave unconditional support to the Shah who held all of Iran hostage for decades? The Shah was brought to power after the CIA engineered the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian leader in 1953. How many of our elected leaders have been thrown out of power by Iran? In how many of our wars– wars in which our nation was invaded, and in which millions of our citizens were butchered– did Iran give critical material support to our enemies?

This isn’t to suggest, of course, that Iran is ‘better’ than the U.S., or that the ‘Islamic Revolution’ holds any moral high ground by comparison. It is merely to say that before we go casting aspersions on another country, we ought to check our own bloody record.

fd, you need to get your facts straight before you engage in any “intelligent dialog.” Ahmedinejad’s ‘power’– lifetime office or not– is extremely limited. And I’d like to see the word-for-word quote where Ahmedinejad said Israel should be wiped off the map; I think you’ll find that as useful a loudmouth as Ahmedinejad might be, he didn’t say that. And speaking of maniacs holding hostages, the Bush administration is currently holding an entire country (Iraq) hostage.

You should educate yourself before trying to pass yourself off as clever.

Um Iraq, Iran, North Korea. You know, the Axis of Evil. Remember that?

Yes, please do set this aside becuase it’s totally moronic. The rich fund republicans. The poor just get snookered by them.

We’re not there. But we’re much closer than many of us would prefer.

What’s more, contemporary Iranian society isn’t quite as uniformly radical as Ahmedinejad’s widely publicized rhetoric would seem to indicate. The Iranian president is more useful to our own militant blowhards (and their corporate media kiss-ups) than he is to his own constituents.

It’s the hypocrites I hate.

All poor and religious who don’t fit into those categories, you have contempt for.