DOWNLOADS: (1165)

PLAYS: (2008)

Embed

It's possible that Brit Hume's statements on Fox News Sunday show he's getting forgetful in his later years. How else to explain it when he so solemnly says Obama can't engage with Iran because of the unrest over the election? After all, he was saying the same thing last year! Via Media Matters:

WALLACE: So, a fiercely fought campaign in Iran; results that show that Ahmadinejad won in a landslide. And now we have people in the streets, supporters of the more moderate challenger, Mousavi, saying that the election was stolen. Brit, where does this leave things inside Iran?

HUME: Well, it looks as if Ahmadinejad will cling to power. He is supported by the key elements of the theocracy that runs that country. Whether these protests will grow or spread is in doubt. They seem to have subsided today after all of the trouble they had yesterday.

I think it leaves Iran about where it was, but showing the world an even clearer picture, as if any were needed, this is basically a police state. And it is difficult, therefore, to see how President Obama's dreams of a more constructive relationship with the powers that be there can go forward, given the fact that this election appears to have been defective if not utterly fraudulent. I mean, after all, Mousavi -- Ahmadinejad is, according to the results, was supposed to have carried Mousavi's hometown by a large margin.

See, Brit's kind of a broken record. Here's what he said in May 2008:

WALLACE: Brit, you made it clear that you think that, on substance, that Obama's wrong. The idea of holding these meetings without preconditions is a bad idea.

Obama goes back and says, "Look -- look at the Bush policy over the last seven years. Has that made Iran weaker or stronger?" Isn't that a fair point on his --

HUME: It's a fair point, but who says it isn't -- who can seriously argue that if President Bush had had some kind of meeting and direct negotiation with [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad that that would have -- would have weakened Iran's aggressive posture in some way?

That makes no sense. In fact, what it would have done would be to elevate this slightly crazy guy who says these unbelievably nutty things to the level of a world statesman, which his present situation does not suggest he is.

Now, some people on the Obama side will say, "Well, you wouldn't really meet with him. You might meet with one of the mullahs." Oh, that would be -- that's a great idea.

I mean, you just stop and think about it. When you sit down at a table with somebody, you expect them to offer you something, but you have to offer them something in return. It's not for the point -- it's not for the purpose of just having a nice chat and getting to know one another.

Why doesn't he just come out and say it? He's against diplomacy, especially when a Democrat does it!

Continue reading »

I don't know what to say. Isn't rioting in the streets the appropriate reaction when your country is taken over through election fraud? What's the alternative, to reward theft? We've already seen what that did here!

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has defended his "completely free" re-election as Iran's president, amid violent clashes on the streets over claims of election fraud.

Mr Ahmadinejad condemned the outside world for "psychological warfare" against Iranians during the election.

Thousands have protested against the result, burning barricades on the streets of Tehran and clashing with police, who responded with tear gas.

Reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi urged his supporters to avoid violence.

Speaking on national television, Mr Ahmadinejad praised the Iranian people for choosing to "look toward the future" rather than returning to the past.

"This is a great victory at a time and condition when the whole material, political and propaganda facilities outside of Iran and sometimes... inside Iran, were total mobilised against our people," he said.

He blamed "foreign media" for instigating a "full-fledged fight against our people".

"Nearly 40 million people took part in a totally free election," he said.

However, the official result, which gave Mr Ahmadinejad a resounding victory - 63% of the vote against 34% for Mr Mousavi - brought the worst violence seen in Tehran for a decade, correspondents said.

The BBC's John Simpson saw secret policemen being attacked and chased away by protesters, which he says is extremely rare.

Some of the protesters in Tehran wore Mr Mousavi's campaign colour of green and chanted "Down with the dictator", news agencies report.

Wow, Iran is actually more like America than I thought! I wonder when the president's going to send in his thugs to shut down the vote count?

TEHRAN, June 13 -- Iran's election commissioner declared Saturday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a decisive victory in most of the country's electoral districts in Friday's presidential election, but the incumbent's leading challenger protested the results, charging widespread vote fraud and vowing to resist a "dangerous manipulation" of the balloting.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who waged a heated campaign against Ahmadinejad's bid for reelection, urged his supporters to reject a "governance of lie and dictatorship."

"I'm warning that I won't surrender to this manipulation," Mousavi said in a statement posted on his Web site Saturday. He said the announced results were "shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran's sacred system" and represented "treason to the votes of the people." He warned that the public would not "respect those who take power through fraud."

Mousavi made the comments after Iran's election chief, Kamran Daneshjoo, said on state television that Ahmadinejad received nearly 21.8 million votes, or more than 63 percent, of the nearly 34.4 million valid votes cast in 346 of Iran's 366 electoral districts. He said Mousavi received 11.7 million votes, or 34 percent.

However, officials delayed without explanation an expected announcement of the complete results, which news agencies said suggested intervention by Iran's Islamic authorities to tamp down a potentially volatile situation.

Riot police cordoned off the Interior Ministry, which directed Friday's voting, and stood guard around key government buildings.

Plainclothes officers fired tear gas to disperse a cheering crowd outside Mousavi's campaign headquarters after the pivotal presidential election ended in confusion, with both sides claiming victory.

UPDATE:

NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario – The U.S. on Saturday refused to accept hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim of a landslide re-election victory in Iran and said it was looking into allegations of election fraud.

"We are monitoring the situation as it unfolds in Iran, but we, like the rest of the world, are waiting and watching to see what the Iranian people decide," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said at a news conference with Canada's foreign affairs minister, Lawrence Cannon.

Minutes after Clinton spoke, the White House released a two-sentence statement praising "the vigorous debate and enthusiasm that this election generated, particularly among young Iranians," but expressing concern about "reports of irregularities."