ahmedinejad

The drums are starting to roll again, louder and louder. The drummers are familiar with the beat, which is easy to pick up. It goes as follows (with room for a little variation and much embellishment):

1. X is mad, bad and very dangerous (the 'evil-doer' theme).

This theme can be backed up with 'x lies', or 'x did this before' refrains.

2. X has or will have very soon weapons of mass destruction (the 'wmd' theme).

These drum rolls can be given backing by 'intelligence agencies' - though why on earth their backing should be taken seriously any more is past a mystery.

3. X hates us and will kill us soon (the 'HELP' theme).

Be careful with this theme: it is the second part which is important in terms of drumming up support, but actually it should be very rarely heard above the general din. If it is played explicitly, it can lead people to wonder how very mad, bad and sick of life you need to be to go out and deliberately pick a fight with bullies 20,000 times your size. For example: 'I'll just throw my only undeveloped nuclear bomb at Israel, I think. Or maybe at America. It will blow some of them up. We can dodge their 20,000 weapon, high-tech nuclear arsenal, should they be so mad and bad and sick-of-life to throw this back at us'.

You don't want people to be thinking that that is what Iran would need to think, in order to pose a threat. You just want the people to think HELP.

4. We can save you from x by killing him (the 'saddam' theme) The only way the tune can be resolved, once you have set out on 1, 2 and 3, is to destroy. No negotiation. No backing down. Be strong, be resolute, ignore the UN Charter. We can take him out with surgical precision, and make the world a safer place. We did it before, didn't we?

La la la la
La la.

Some extracts below from Katie Couric's interview with Ahmedinejad on CBS.The whole thing is well worth watching. The first part (not transcribed) deals with the nuclear threat. Available here:

Part 1
Part 2

KC Some might say that Iran is the largest sponsor, the biggest... er... perpetrator of state-sponsored and has produced inflammatory rhetoric along the lines that Israel should be blown off the map. Given those things, can you understand the concern the international community may have about Iran, in particular?

AM: ... With respect to Palestine, I've always raised a very clear question. What I'm saying, is that we need to ask ourselves where did the events of WW2 happen? Well the answer is - it happened in Europe. So who killed 60 million people during WW2? It was.. people that belonged to the European governments of the time - some European governments at the time. So - what does this have to do with the Palestinian people? Why do we use the murders of WW2 as a pretext to kill Palestinian people now? So, the questions I ask are clear ones.