Great article, summing up Ahmadinejad's recent rantings and delusions:

In Iran, Arming for Armageddon

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, December 16, 2005;

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/15/AR2005121501428.html

Lest you get carried away with today's good news from Iraq, consider what's
happening next door in Iran. The wild pronouncements of the new Iranian
president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have gotten sporadic press ever since he
called for Israel to be wiped off the map. He subsequently amended himself
to say that Israel should simply be extirpated from the Middle East map and
moved to some German or Austrian province. Perhaps near the site of an old
extermination camp?

Except that there were no such camps, indeed no Holocaust at all, says
Ahmadinejad. Nothing but "myth," a "legend" that was "fabricated . . . under
the name 'Massacre of the Jews.' " This brought the usual reaction from
European and American officials, who, with Churchillian rage and power,
called these statements unacceptable. That something serious might accrue to
Iran for this -- say, expulsion from the United Nations for violating its
most basic principle by advocating the outright eradication of a member
state -- is, of course, out of the question.

To be sure, Holocaust denial and calls for Israel's destruction are
commonplace in the Middle East. They can be seen every day on Hezbollah TV,
in Syrian media, in Egyptian editorials appearing in semiofficial
newspapers. But none of these aspiring mass murderers are on the verge of
acquiring nuclear weapons that could do in one afternoon what it took Hitler
six years to do: destroy an entire Jewish civilization and extinguish 6
million souls.

Everyone knows where Iran's nuclear weapons will be aimed. Everyone knows
they will be put on Shahab rockets, which have been modified so that they
can reach Israel. And everyone knows that if the button is ever pushed, it
will be the end of Israel.

But it gets worse. The president of a country about to go nuclear is a
confirmed believer in the coming apocalypse. Like Judaism and Christianity,
Shiite Islam has its own version of the messianic return -- the reappearance
of the Twelfth Imam. The more devout believers in Iran pray at the Jamkaran
mosque, which houses a well from which, some believe, he will emerge.

When Ahmadinejad unexpectedly won the presidential elections, he immediately
gave $17 million of government funds to the shrine. Last month Ahmadinejad
said publicly that the main mission of the Islamic Revolution is to pave the
way for the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam.

And as in some versions of fundamentalist Christianity, the second coming
will be accompanied by the usual trials and tribulations, death and
destruction. Iranian journalist Hossein Bastani reported Ahmadinejad saying
in official meetings that the hidden imam will reappear in two years.

So a Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic, aspiring genocidist, on the
verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse, believes that the end is not
only near but nearer than the next American presidential election. (Pity the
Democrats. They cannot catch a break.) This kind of man would have, to put
it gently, less inhibition about starting Armageddon than a normal person.
Indeed, with millennial bliss pending, he would have positive incentive to,
as they say in Jewish eschatology, hasten the end.

To be sure, there are such madmen among the other monotheisms. The Temple
Mount Faithful in Israel would like the al-Aqsa mosque on Jerusalem's Temple
Mount destroyed to make way for the third Jewish Temple and the messianic
era. The difference with Iran, however, is that there are all of about 50 of
these nuts in Israel, and none of them is president.

The closest we've come to a messianically inclined leader in America was a
secretary of the interior who 24 years ago, when asked about his stewardship
of the environment, told Congress: "I do not know how many future
generations we can count on before the Lord returns; whatever it is we have
to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future
generations." But James Watt's domain was the forest, and his weapon of
choice was the chainsaw. He was not in charge of nuclear weapons to be
placed on missiles that are paraded through the streets with, literally,
Israel's name on them. (They are adorned with banners reading "Israel must
be wiped off the map.") It gets worse. After his U.N. speech in September,
Ahmadinejad was caught on videotape telling a cleric that during the speech
an aura, a halo, appeared around his head right on the podium of the General
Assembly. "I felt the atmosphere suddenly change. And for those 27 or 28
minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. . . . It seemed as if a
hand was holding them there, and it opened their eyes to receive the message
from the Islamic Republic."

Negotiations to deny this certifiable lunatic genocidal weapons have been
going nowhere. Everyone knows they will go nowhere. And no one will do
anything about it.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

David
www.soundanalarm.net