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© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.Obama, Ahmadinejad trade barbs over 9/11
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nath
Although I am glad to see Mr. Obama stand up to this man, I cannot help but think somehow this rings hollow, considering an ex-"Czar" of President Obama's, Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, openly held some of the same beliefs. Where was the outrage, then?
Helter_Skelter
Tough one for the progressives...who to support, Obama or Ahmadinejad? Anyway, Obama needs to learn that when you extend your hand out to Muslims, they bite it.
kokosama
dont much care for the iranian president but i think an outside investigation is needed however much america resists it.
i sometimes wonder if bin laden ever really existed.
Sarge
I have no problem with anything Obama said here. And that's saying something!
"i sometimes wonder if bin laden ever really existed"
Oh, my....
smithinjapan
Helter: "Tough one for the progressives...who to support, Obama or Ahmadinejad?"
What this is a tough one for is the Republican supporters. They have to hate Obama and say 'no' to anything and everything he says, but that means saying 'yes' to Ahmadinejad. You guys must REALLY be kicking yourselves while you spin in circles.
Well, except for sarge, to be fair. "I have no problem with anything Obama said here. And that's saying something!"
It does indeed.
MisterCreosote
Our rookie president regrets coming out in favor of the GZ mosque?
MistWizard
This is nothing but a pi$$ing match, and even the dumbest conservative should be able to see that. But no surprise that a conservative has latched on the the "who" of the match rather the "what" of the principles. Ahmadinejad called for an independent U.N. investigation into 9/11. I support that. I do not support Ahmadinejad, but I don't expect a conservative to be able to wrap his head around the difference.
Bebert61
Is this what it has come down to? Anything someone says that someone else doesn't like becomes "hate speech?"
The idea that the United States committed 9/11 is a red herring. What should be investigated is whether the government knew of the plot and didn't stop it from being carried out ... for whatever reason - opportunism, incompetence, etc.
MisterCreosote
Excellent point. Obama appointed some serious kooks to high places and though it wouldn't come back to haunt him.
neogreenjapan
Why did these countries have to leave too? I can understand USA leaving, though I don't agree with it, but it makes no sense at all why EU, Australia, Canada, NZ, C.Rica had to leave too.
Ahmadinejad said that most people in the world believe that the U.S. government was involved in 9/11. This is a fact. The majority of the people in the world think US is not telling the true story of 9/11. A very large number of Americans think that too.
Outside the United States, not in the Middle East, but Canada, Europe, Latin America and the Far East, finding people who accept the Bush and Obama administration’s “party line” about “box cutters and hijackers” is difficult.
However, back here in the “good ole’ USA,” even comedian Jon Stewart, normally an outspoken critic of government insanity, has agreed to lead a march on Washinton to quell “rumors” about 9/11, rumors of wrongdoing by people he despises.
What is the difference? Why do those outside the United States see things do differently? The answer is freedom of press, the first of the hasty additions to the constitution, a guarantee provided for in the 1st Amendment. There had been assaults on freedom of the press before, particularly during wartime but never anything on the scale seen after 9/11. Across the board, not just the news but even movies and television shows, fiction, censored, propaganda, peddling ignorance, fear and screaming “conspiracy theory” at anyone trying to get word out.
America is a dictatorship.
It isn’t just corporate lobbyists or two broken political parties.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/09/24/gordon-duff-what-ahmadinejad-isnt-telling-us/
MisterCreosote
Neogreenjapan,
do you make it a habit to plagiarize? Because the complete version of your post (12:42) can be found at http://dprogram.net/2010/09/24/video-maybe-muslims-did-it-gordon-duff/ among other sites...
skipbeat
Obama's speech is to appeal toward people's emotions. Ahmadinejad is wrong about 9/11. What he says is pretty much what some anti-Bush and pro-Obama feels about both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars today.
By punishing one man at the expense of the people, is it really going to bring peace to the world?
neogreenjapan
I did put the source here.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/09/24/gordon-duff-what-ahmadinejad-isnt-telling-us/
You could have checked my link. The fact of the mater is that the majority of people in the world think US was behind 9/11. Obama is simply shooting the messenger. Ahmadinejad. A growing number of Americans also think US was involved in 9/11. The coorporate censorship in the American media is making ordinary Americans disillusioned.
Alphaape
I didn't vote for Obam, and I have had problems with some of his methods, but I am glad that he did indeed stand up to this loser. That is what President should do. I guess that is why many in the world despise the US. Unlike here in Japan and other places, if the leader gets too unpopular, he is voted out and a new government is formed. In the US we are stuck with the ones we elected, so we have to accept it until the next go around. So for those who say that those on the right are now upset, I don't think so.
i sometimes wonder if bin laden ever really existed.
Just take a look throughout the Middle East. No matter how much the US tried, we could never produce the hatred that many jihadist show towards the US and how many are followers of bin laden. I guess that plot to bomb jetliners over the Pacific, and the other plots against the US are just made up too.
Sarge
"The fact of the matter is that the majority of people in the world think ( the ) US ( government ) was behind 9/11"
In your mind.
SuperLib
Uh, I think that speaks more about "the majority of the people in the world" rather than the United States government...
I'm guessing there have been millions of reporters and just plain nutty conspiracy theorists (or perhaps the majority of the people in the world?) who have been unable to find any "smoking gun" link between the government and 9/11. And it hasn't been for a lack of trying. UN investigation? Sure, that will turn up something that a gazillion nutters and the media itself haven't been able to find. 9/11 is probably the most reported on event in the history of the world and some people still think there is a group of men sitting somewhere laughing at how they pulled it off without getting caught. Absolutely amazing.
Take any major news story and I'll give you a conspiracy theory behind it. The US didn't land on the moon. Elvis is still alive. Obama isn't an American citizen. Osama Bin Laden doesn't even exist. We can't even get everyone to agree that the Holocaust actually happened. It's just endless brain candy for people who want to believe they know something that others don't.
MistWizard
Well Super, most people believe in some supreme deity but I have not seen the proof yet.
But do you realize the commissioner and co-commissioner of the 9/11 investigation committee have themselves cried foul over things being hidden from them in the course of the investigation. Of course you do, as it has been pointed out before. You, like all those countries that walked out with the U.S. just don't want to hear anything that might challenge what you already made your mind up about, as its inconvenient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission
Which is a different thing from being the most investigated event.
WilliB
Well, with the ground zero mosque in place, he will get used to hear statements like this at this location regularly. I wonder if the community organizer is chaning his position on the mosque now?
smithinjapan
neogreenjapan: "You could have checked my link. The fact of the mater is that the majority of people in the world think US was behind 9/11."
I think it's safe to say that the majority of the people in the world have DOUBTS about what exactly happened on 9/11, but I don't think it's fair or correct to jump from that to saying that the majority of the people around the world think it was a US conspiracy.
smithinjapan
WilliB: "Well, with the ground zero mosque in place, he will get used to hear statements like this at this location regularly."
Actually, what you'll get used to is paranoid and intolerant nuts assuming that you'll get used to hearing the kind of thing you quoted above.
MisterCreosote
Amadinnerjahd has put Obama in a tight spot. 9-11 troofer "theories" will be regular fare at the GZ mosque. Van Jones espoused em, what's to stop hate-preaching Mohammedans from doing so? Nothing. They will be within the rights the US Constitution grants them ( different story if they tried this in Canada or Europe...) and will again cynically use our own laws against us and simply point to the 'legal' process that got them the building rights in the first place as an example of what they are allowed to do on their own property.
Obama, like most "progressives," still needs the crutch of his vapid 60s-era cultural relativism. It allows him and those like him who prattle about "tolerance" (tolerance of barbarism is not tolerance) and "diversity" to feel at least morally superior to the rest of us,since they cannot rationally counter our arguments. They have no respect for the obvious lessons of history.
SezWho2
I'm not quite sure what this means, but I guess it doesn't mean the hundreds of thousands killed in Afghanistan and Iraq or in the ongoing violence in Africa or elsewhere around the globe. Wouldn't you know that the we would claim the greater tragedy?
If what Ahmadinejad is saying accurately reflects his views, he certainly has a whimsical view of history. But I don't think he's the only one. Obama chastizes Ahmadinejad for making us hurt the Iranian people. I guess that's one way to look at it, although Ahmadinejad did not really do that. We did what we wanted to do because Ahmadinejad didn't do what we wanted him to do. It comes down to what we wanted--not what Ahmadinejad forced.
Part of the price of hosting the UN, something that is much to our advantage, should be allowing a country's leader to speak freely there without having to worry about the "sensitivities" of the host country.
WilliB
Smithjapan:
Did you read the article? It states accurately how widespread the conspiracy theories are in the muslim world. You can full expect this to be perpetrated at the ground zero mosque.
MisterCreosote
Word games, dissembling and rephrasing - and the reflexive need to do so - only highlight the dangerous inanity of "tolerance" for someone as despicable as a Holocaust denier,an accomplice in the '79 seizure of our Teheran embassy, a rabid anti-semite and a 9-11 troofer clown like Iran's president.
sailwind
The folks that would support an independent investigation by the U.N know that this be would be nothing more than another golden opportunity to bash the United States and its evil foreign policy, hence the support. Nothing more than another chance to highlight why we deserved to get hit by 19 Islamic extremists with box cutters who also just happened to have attended flight schools in the United States to fly em, boy talk about your coincidences on that one.
SuperLib
Ah, maybe you're right. Maybe the problem is me, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and all of Europe. Perhaps sometimes we need to be challenged by Holocaust-denying gay-hanging woman-stoning theocrats. In the end our tolerance will only make us better people.
See? I'm learning.
SuperLib
Ah, I see you've met Sez.
MistWizard
Gee, I was just hoping for more facts in light of the fact that the current president might use the opportunity to demand the truth from the lying scumbags of the former administration. We have all been debating far to long to have you extrapolate hate for certain people and policies to the entire U.S. of A., so please, desist.
sailwind
Guess this would also be a golden opportunity to get yet another 'Bush Bash' in for some also.
Elbuda Mexicano
A survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2006 found that majorities of Muslims in Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan said they did not believe groups of Arabs carried out the Sept 11 terrorists attacks. The survey also found that just over half the Muslims in Great Britain held similar opinions, as did almost a fifth of Muslims in the U.S. Ok, so the majority of Muslims around the world actually believe this 9/11 terrorism is all some kind of Zionist/Israeli/USA/UK plot to bring down the World Trade Towers in NYC?? And now these same fools want to make some huge Muslim center near ground zero?? Scary!! Very, very scary and time to let Iran and etc...understand who their daddy is, the USA, who when need, come down and slap them upside the head, and let them know that they must keep that crude oil flowing for us and all of our nice allies around the world, like Japan and the EU.
neogreenjapan
Most Europeans don't take the box cutter knives, 2 airplanes 3 buildings, airplanes evaporating into air in Pentagon for face value. Not sure why Obama gets all personal and emotional about this. He should grow up and be more professional. Why can't Obama and Ahmadinejad just be on a talk show and discuss and talk to each other unlike what they do now, which is talking about each other to other people.
neogreenjapan
This kind of cynical thinking is very common in USA. The US government is cynical enough to bomb their own city in order to get something which is more important than humanity, oil. This, I think most people in the world agrees with. And since the evidence laid out by the US government defies the laws of nature, people must really believe in Santa Claus. The indoctrination carried out at schools and in their local churches must have done wonders for the government.
WilliB
newogreen:
You don´t know what "most Europeans" think, and in any case it is irrelevant. The troother claim (that a US goverment, after countless jihadist attacks, faked yet another jihadist attack) is so ridiculous that it does not deserve debate.
What is scary is that the troother and holocaust denier Ahmedinejad will soon have nuclear weapons to back up his threats.
neogreenjapan
All I want is a rational debate between Obama and Ahmadinejad. I am sure the majority of the people in the world would welcome this move. It's just that Americans are scared and too hot headed.
Moderator: Readers, please focus your comments on the Obama-Ahmadinejad exchange rather than getting caught up in conspiracy theories.
thetruthhurts
It seems to me that Iran continuing to have an order out for a hit on a regular citizen for merely writing a book is a particularly good example of hot-headedness.
Alphaape
What is ironic about Obama's statements was that Obama said that Ahmadinejad said this in NYC, not far from Ground Zero and that his remarks were insensitive. But a few weeks ago, he said it was wrong to deny those who wanted to build a mosque there. Seems to me that he may be speaking out of both sides of the mouth on this.
But at least he decided to put America first and note how silly A's claims are.
SuperLib
About what? If the Holocaust happened? 9/11? The right for gay people to continue breathing? I think our President has better things to do than give a platform to hate speech so anti-Americans can get their jollies. And I enjoy the fact that there's something you want but will never get. Shake that lil fist harder.
SezWho2
Tch. Tch. Tch. Specify.
I have no particular tolerance for the notions that Ahmadinejad expresses, but I do have tolerance for his expression of them. The best way to counter error is not to get all huffy and trade inanity for inanity, but to demonstrate that it is, in fact, error. This is something that you (and SuperLib) consistently refuse to do.
neogreenjapan
Obama is scared of Ahmadinejad. Scared to be confronted with 9/11. In the mean time like a coward he will talk about Ahmadinejad without ever wanting to actually confronting Ahmadinejad.
MisterCreosote
which is why some of the Mohammedan terrorists involved in 9-11 trained there.
neogreenjapan
They were trained there? So why did US go invade Afghanistan then?
AuntyAmerican
The problem for the USA right now is that Iran is out of control.
Washington wants Iran to be an obedient client state, as it was after the US-backed overthrow of a parliamentary government to install the Shar - during which period, it should be remembered, the USA fully supported Iran's nuclear program. Then the American puppet government was overthrown by a popular revolt and Washington has been punishing Iran ever since.
Typical American imperialist attitude. We should expect nothing less of them.
SuperLib
Which of his notions do you have no particular tolerance for?
TimRussert
And the new regime has been punishing the Iranian people since 79,far worse than America, but you are OK with that?
AuntyAmerican
I'm OK with The USA keeping out of the internal politics of other countries.
The suggestion that Washington cares what is in the best interests of the Iranian people sounds great but holds no weight at all.
RomeoRamenII
Heh, looks like there will be no "beer summit" at the White House.
RR
TimRussert
But when Ahmadinejad threatens Israel or comes to America to preach or when Iran directly interferes in the internal politics of Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon you see no wrongdoing?