MSNBC's First Read links today to an Op-Ed piece published in the New York Sun that contains the remarks that Sarah Palin would have given had she gotten to attend the rally to call out Iran's President Ahmadinejad. It is horrifying.
Here's the link to the full text: New York Sun
Any totally uninformed hysterical right wing blogger could have written as coherent and cogent an article as Sarah Palin. She mixes up the issues and repeats stuff straight out of World Net Daily and other right wing pseudo-news sites. And it is pure propaganda. Meant to whip up fury against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who she refers to as Iran's "Dictator". The last I checked "Dictator" is defined thusly:
- a person exercising absolute power, esp. a ruler who has absolute, unrestricted control in a government without hereditary succession.
Ahmadinejad was elected President of Iran in 2005. He's up for re-election in 2009. There's a very good chance he'll lose. This constant re-definition of Ahmadinejad as the sole ruler of Iran is only helpful to the Neocons who want to go to war with that country. It is inaccurate. Iran is an Islamic Republic. Ultimate authority lies with the ruling council of Mullahs, not Ahmadinejad. It might sound nice for the cameras to use Ahmadinejad, but it is a vast over-simplificaiton of the issue.
Here are some of her more egregious propaganda bits:
Tomorrow, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will come to New York — to the heart of what he calls the Great Satan — and speak freely in this, a country whose demise he has called for.
Ahmadinejad may choose his words carefully, but underneath all of the rhetoric is an agenda that threatens all who seek a safer and freer world. We gather here today to highlight the Iranian dictator's intentions and to call for action to thwart him.
He must be stopped.
The world must awake to the threat this man poses to all of us. Ahmadinejad denies that the Holocaust ever took place. He dreams of being an agent in a "Final Solution" — the elimination of the Jewish people. He has called Israel a "stinking corpse" that is "on its way to annihilation." Such talk cannot be dismissed as the ravings of a madman — not when Iran just this summer tested long-range Shahab-3 missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv, not when the Iranian nuclear program is nearing completion, and not when Iran sponsors terrorists that threaten and kill innocent people around the world.
And here are some unsourced and very suspect contentions from her:
So, what should we do about this growing threat? First, we must succeed in Iraq. If we fail there, it will jeopardize the democracy the Iraqis have worked so hard to build, and empower the extremists in neighboring Iran. Iran has armed and trained terrorists who have killed our soldiers in Iraq, and it is Iran that would benefit from an American defeat in Iraq.
If we retreat without leaving a stable Iraq, Iran's nuclear ambitions will be bolstered. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons — they could share them tomorrow with the terrorists they finance, arm, and train today. Iranian nuclear weapons would set off a dangerous regional nuclear arms race that would make all of us less safe.
But Iran is not only a regional threat; it threatens the entire world. It is the no. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. It sponsors the world's most vicious terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah. Together, Iran and its terrorists are responsible for the deaths of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, and in Iraq today. They have murdered Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, and other Muslims who have resisted Iran's desire to dominate the region. They have persecuted countless people simply because they are Jewish.
Iran is responsible for attacks not only on Israelis, but on Jews living as far away as Argentina. Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial are part of Iran's official ideology and murder is part of its official policy. Not even Iranian citizens are safe from their government's threat to those who want to live, work, and worship in peace. Politically-motivated abductions, torture, death by stoning, flogging, and amputations are just some of its state-sanctioned punishments.
It is said that the measure of a country is the treatment of its most vulnerable citizens. By that standard, the Iranian government is both oppressive and barbaric. Under Ahmadinejad's rule, Iranian women are some of the most vulnerable citizens.
If an Iranian woman shows too much hair in public, she risks being beaten or killed.
I don't know if she wrote this. I hope she did because that would explain why it is as awful as it is. If she didn't, then this is McCain's policy towards Iran. And it's every bit as scary as Bush toward Iraq back in 2002. Maybe scarier.