Originally posted by tce2506
Nash, Like This?
"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," he said,
Translations are a tricky business. Less so if you have a vested interest in their meaning.
What Ahmadinejad actually said, was:
"The occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time."
He was not making a threat, he was making a hopeful case for, to him, an almost metaphysical inevitability.
And even in so saying, was only quoting someone else who said these words. Khomeini urged pro-Palestinians not to give up hope when he originally said this.
He did
NOT in any way say that he was going be the one to make it so. Did
NOT say that Israel was going to be wiped off the face of the earth by him, or by nukes, or by his nukes.
In fact the words used by Ahmadinejad are tempered compared to everything that's been said against Israel in the last 35 years.
Because "inevitability" was all he said. And we should all be well versed in parsing that kind of gibberish by now. Personally, I don't take it any more seriously than the nuclear power that is Pakistan having its fair share of beefs with the nuclear power that is Israel. It's the same garbage that these countries have been saying for years. Somehow, they get by.
Only in this case, Bush is lookin' to get his arse out of a jam, by once again gettin' the kids involved.... in yet another misguided and mismanaged war, using yet another bogus call to war (and the usual bull#$%^ misinformation that it always entails).
Last week it was the threatening spectre of some smoking gun 45 minute mushroom cloud. This week it's... well, it's the same thing. Same exact thing.
Deja vu.
There's a line in some song.... forget what: "Some people can't be told, ya know, they just gotta learn the hard way."
And then there are other people who, no matter what, will just never
ever learn.