I had intended to stay out of this thread, but something just floated up into my datastreams that is eminently germane.

W. Patrick Lang (Colonel Ret. US Army), who was West Point's first Professor of the Arabic Language has posted his thoughts regarding Ahmadinejad at Columbia on his blog Sic Semper Tyrannis.
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What Ahmadinajad said at Columbia

I listened to it all.

His remarks were "bracketed" for me by those of Bollinger (the Columbia president) who sought to distance himself from any possible accusation of hospitality and Nora O'Donnell (MSNBC anchor) who sought to distance herself from any possible accusation of neutrality.

Ahmadinajad said:

- Scholars should seek the truth.

- That he does not dispute the facts of the Holocaust, but that he thinks that scholarship should continue on the details and on the effect on his part of the world. He particularly stressed the innocence of the Palestinian people in the matter of the Holocaust. Since scholarship continues on the matter of this subject (the Holocaust) under the sponsorship of the US Holocaust Museum, this was an interesting point.

- He said that the nature of Palestine/Israel should be determined by referendum among "Jewish Palestinians, Muslim Palestinians and Christian Palestinians." This is a variation on the long standing Arab desire for either a bi-national state or a state that is not specifically a Jewish state. He did not specify whether his referendum would include Palestinians of the diaspora. That, of course, would make a difference in the outcome.

- He said that the Iranian nuclear enrichment program was forced on them by foreign defaults on agreements for nuclear electric assistance. He said that the Iranian sites are all under IAEA inspection and will remain that way. He also said that the concentration level of their enrichment did not meet the requirement for weapons production.

Continued