Portions of Wallace’s interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are set to air on Sunday. CBS has given C-SPAN permission to air the 60 Minutes segment followed by “Wallace’s entire 90-minute interview.” C-SPAN’s press release says: “According to CBS News, the request to air the entire interview on C-SPAN came directly from President Ahmadinejad.”
I’m guessing the truncated 60 Minutes interview has some juicy stuff. Color me intrigued.
“Give peace a chance, infidels!”
Assuming Ahmedinijad didn’t make any blunders in the interview, I can’t help but feel this is good press for Ahmedinijad. If he can give a controlled interview, he won’t seem as foreign or malicious as he was previously. Given that, I would love to see Bush, or even better Rice or Cheney, give a public interview for Al Jazeera, so that we can reap similar benefits. The best way to stop being the great Satan is to show them you’re human.
Then we’d best not put Cheney up there.
<rimshot>
Rice and Rumsfeld both appeared on Al Jazeera back when we were invading Iraq, though I’m not sure how successful they were in persuading the Arab world of our good intentions.
I’m fascinated to see how this turns out. I’ve been defending this asshole quite a bit lately due to the misquoting and hyperbole the media (seemingly) injects into any speech he gives. This should prove out whether he’s Hitler or just Mel Gibson.
H.
Thanks for the links. I’d say Rice did ok, which is really all you need. But man, Rummy needs to stop answering questions. The interviewer easily baited Rumsfeld into defending himself Afghanistan, or how America is not a colonial power.
Frankly, either of those with a nuclear weapon gives me the willies, so this guy is going to have to go a long way to convince me he’s even halfway sane.
Worry about North Korea, then. Iraq FTW!
H.
So Cindy, convinced? I’ve read the transcript, and Wallace comes off as a much more uncontrolled participant. He does everything short of smacking Ahmadinejad with his shoe to try and get some kind of insane reaction.
On the other hand, Ahmadinejad didn’t really address his more provocative statements, but Wallace pretty much disallowed any intelligent answers, instead demanding “yes or no” to his loaded questions. Frankly, Ahmadinejad is one of the smarter speakers among leaders, whether or not he’s Hitler.
H.
Hitler loved dogs.
Yeah, well, Hitler’s dead, I hate dogs, and you’ve triggered Godwin. I hope you’re happy.
Hitler loved water too. If flavourless nazi juice is your thing, then enjoy.
Supposedly Ahmadinejad started blogging on his personal website but it takes forever to load, and I got no reaction when I clicked on the English language icon.
It works for me. The Arabic looks way cooler, though.
The site’s hard to navigate – too much java – and I can’t seem to find any other posts. This looks to be intended as the first in a series. Also, the translation is too fond of n-dashes, and in many cases it looks like they are improperly standing in for what ought to be commas.
There’s also a poll:
The site gives the results as 49% (107248) for yes and 51% (112158) for no. I voted no, on the presumably reasonable assumption that he meant another world war.
This post alone certainly paints Ahmadinejad as too religious and too nationalistic (edit: and also not a very good writer, but it’s a goddamned blog AND a translation, so what do you expect?), but what world leader isn’t both? I wouldn’t call him crazy on this alone. Many of the views expressed therein have at least some basis in fact, particularly his complaints about Western attempts to dominate and control Iran.
I can only assume it is because of the Zionist conspiracy against his website. Perhaps he should hold an international conference in Tehran to decide how to best push them into the sea and free up his website.
Does anyone have good reason to suggest that his doubt/denial of the Holocaust and desire to kill Jews is not real? I could swear that I’ve read non-U.S. source newspapers who have quoted his speeches in which he called for the destruction of the Jews and denied the existence of the Holocaust. In fact, I thought I had posted such a quote here in the past, but I couldn’t find it on a quick search. Maybe I’m hallucinating.
The website worked when I tried Internet Explorer instead of Opera. I’ll have to inform him that he’s supporting an evil Western monopolist…
Depends on what you mean by “real”. He certainly was quoted on all that but he seems rather slippery to me. I wouldn’t put it beyond him to deliberately utter whatever outrage he thinks the Iranian and Arab plebs want to here. In that case, he might be a rational politician regardless.
The main reason is that he’s never said either of those two things. Covered extensively here:
H.
Or just plain old Ahmadinejad.