Fascinating.

And, the other issue that’s scary is that Americans (and maybe Brits too) have a very short memory. It’s now generally accepted that there were no WMDs in Iraq but Bush is claiming that Iran has a weapons program. Sound familiar.

In the end, it’s all about trust. I don’t trust Bush or Cheney at all. Nothing either of them say or for that matter, anyone in their corrupt administration is believable.

Here’s another soon to be considered fact: the US went into Iraq for oil. All of us said it right up front and we have Bush on video denying it. Even Alan Greenspan says it in his recently published book.

What will make the world a better place is for Bush, Cheney, and all of them to go on trial as war criminals. Maybe Blair too, who knows.

Your last paragraph clinched it for me. I just don’t understand how we have the right to say that another country is not able to use nuclear power responsibly. Christ, even if he was making nuclear weapons what right do we have to say that he can’t? It is completely bizarre. Double standards at the ultimate level.

What worries me the most is that Bush only has a little time now to put anything that may be on the board into action. Maybe i’m being overly concerned. Does he actually have the ability/resources to do it in that time? I’m not so sure.. but my gut says that he may try.

Things like this really do point me in the direction of non-violent confrontation (what Bollinger did was violent). If you want things to work well with Iran, an important country in the world, why not talk with them civilly instead of bullying them.

If some country told us we couldn’t have nuclear power and that we had too many bombs and our leader was a tyrant…

We don’t need to be told what to think. We can listen to Ahmedinejad’s speech and decide what kind of guy he is on our own.

I’m sick of having opinions shoved down my throat by the government and the tv news media (and now, University presidents???)

I would love to see his face if someone did say it like it is, in front of the world’s media, and preferably in no uncertain terms.

I agree with the Dean who invited Ahmadinejad to speak (not Bollinger) a few years ago: if you invite someone, you treat them civilly, otherwise don’t invite them.

The idea is to not go to war with Iran. I just got finished listening to Norman Podhoretz, arguably the architect of many of Bush’s ideas (and he’s advising Rudy…) and he wants, more than anything else, to go to war with Iran. He’s one of the most dangerous people around, maybe more dangerous than Bin Laden.

Ahmadinejad isn’t even the most powerful guy in Iraq, doesn’t represent popular Iranian views, and he’s probably not going to be reelected as he’s fucked the Iranian economy. The best way to deal with him is to ignore him. But, if you invite him to speak, treat him civilly and don’t use him for your own political gains. Bollinger should be fired for what he did, he disgraced the school and he embarrassed me.

However, I find myself getting really annoyed at how good he is at “bobbing and weaving” and slipping away from anwering questions. Part of what bothers me is that he acts just like most US politicians in this regard. The other part is that he’s aggravatingly better at it than many US politicos.

To me, Bollinger’s pre emptive strikes were embarrassingly obvious attempts to assuage his (Bollinger) critics for allowing the speech at all. My opinion: Bollinger obliterated the illusion of objectiveness and actually helped Ahmadinijad. Had it been a debate, that would have been another story.

In the meantime a huge problem is how, due to this administration, we’ve lost so much credibility when attacking from any kind of moral ground. I hate the fact that when our administration legitimately refers to another country’s human rights problems for example, our own crap bites us in the rear.