PittsburghThoughts

Ahmadinejad takes a bite of the big apple while the serpent revels in wicked delight,

If you read yesterday's blog, you may have deduced that we were in New York City over the weekend. Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was there too but we didn't run into each other. I think he had more pressing business.

He was invited to speak at New York's Columbia University by Columbia President Lee Bollinger who introduced Mr Ahmadinejad as a "a petty and cruel dictator." Petty? Cruel? Aren't these the traits that we ourselves have refined through issue avoidance, obfuscation and the misdirection of the public's attention? Isn't misrepresentation and out-and-out lying on par with being petty and cruel?

Columbia's stance is only a tattered reminder that we have lost our tenuous grasp on any claims to moral authority that we may have previously held in our once imagined world of lessor nations.

While Bush declares that Moveon.org has attacked the military through it's "betray us" ad, Ahmadinejad questions the Holocaust. *While the US illegibly transports nuclear arms in the air space over our heads, Iran has, to a degree, **allowed the IAEA to inspect their nuclear facilities.

Ahmadinejad plays to his base and Bush to his, he hates Jews in the same sense that Bush hates terrorists, i.e., without them, both of their politically expedient super villains disappear. Bush thumps his chest and Ahmadinejad thumps back, It's good theater and an even better way to pad your military budget. The stakes are high and the gamblers well heeled, you and I may lose but that's a small price to pay for our participation in this winner-take-all game of no compromise, no quarter, isn't it?  Gene

*B-52 bomber mistakenly loaded with six nuclear warheads flew from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug. 30, resulting in an Air Force-wide investigation, according to three officers who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.
The B-52 was loaded with Advanced Cruise Missiles, part of a Defense Department effort to decommission 400 of the ACMs. But the nuclear warheads should have been removed at Minot before being transported to Barksdale, the officers said. The missiles were mounted onto the pylons of the bomber’s wings.


**The IAEA has access to Iranian nuclear facilities under a safeguards agreement, and in February 2007 it verified that Iran had not diverted to illegal use any material it had declared. However, Iran has not implemented a more intrusive Additional Protocol it signed in 2003, so the IAEA says it cannot verify the absence of undeclared nuclear material.