Posted on 08/30/2005 8:57:11 AM PDT by F14 Pilot
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the newly elected president of Iran, is a slight man with a clipped, graying brown beard and a quiet manner, who lives simply, dresses casually, and presents himself as a man of the people.
As mayor of Tehran the religiously conservative Ahmadinejad distinguished himself by his lack of ostentation (he maintains a Web site called Mardomyar, "The people's friend") and by warring against endemic bribery and corruption, which is how he won the popularity that thrust him into national prominence.
He also repealed the social reforms put in place by his predecessors, insisted that male city employees wear long-sleeved shirts and grow beards, and cracked down on women who violated Islamic dress codes.
Elected president only after "reform" politicians had been removed from the ballot by the country's ruling clerics, he is very much an unreconstructed product of Iran's quarter-century-old Islamist revolution. He was without a doubt a key player in the student movement that helped to overthrow the shah, to maneuver the mullahs into power, and later to conduct bloody purges of leftist and secular political groups opposed to creating Iran's strict mullahocracy.
But when his name was linked recently to the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, one of the revolution's central triumphal events, the president-elect took pains to distance himself, and the official government organs rallied behind him. Ahmadinejad's careful denial shows how much Iranian attitudes toward the takeover have changed.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Any nation that backtracks from human rights and freedom, after having once had a tradition of both, has only itself to blame.
These pathetic people deserve what they get.
Pardon me?
ping
A few weeks back, the White House was "looking into" the claims that the new president was one of the terrorists.
Seems to me that such research would have been done ages ago... like when this guy was MAYOR. Correct? Why would the White House all of the sudden be curious about him?
First I must know the severity of your offense.
LoL!
Anyway, I don't believe Iranian people are pathetic and they deserved what they got.
This stupid president of Iran is chosen by supreme leader in a sham election and majority of Iranian people didn't vote for him.
And this regime in Iran is not a legitimate representative of the Persians.
So, I disagree with what you said!
It doesn't matter if he was one of them or not.
The whole regime of Mullahs is guilty.
...meets Gulbuth the Rampant.
Of course. But, I would never believe that the White House is speculating on any election's outcome. They plan for contingencies, instead.
Neither were the Bolsheviks representatives of the Russian people.
But the Russian people allowed themselves to be oppressed and manipulated for 70 years....and they knew better.
That's pathetic.
Nope!
They simply didn't want to die!
warring against endemic bribery and corruption, which is how he won the popularity that thrust him into national prominence.
Who says The Atlantic Monthly doesn't have a sense of humor! It is one the finest pieces of satire I've read in a while now. KUDOS to Mark Bowden!!!
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