Pop Quiz:
Who said the following?
1. "You, who have used nuclear weapons against innocent people, who have used uranium ordnance in Iraq, should be tried as war criminals in courts,"
A. Michael Moore
B. Cindy Sheehan
C. Howard Dean
D. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Give up? Surprisingly the answer is "D".
Doesn't this illustrate the insanity of the American Left? They are sharing the same talking points with the enemies of this country. Apparently liberals have their conscious removed while in college.
Tehran raps U.S. as 'war criminals'
November 27, 2005
TEHRAN -- Iran's hard-line president said yesterday the Bush administration should be tried on war-crimes charges, and he denounced the West for pressuring Iran to curb its controversial nuclear program.
"You, who have used nuclear weapons against innocent people, who have used uranium ordnance in Iraq, should be tried as war criminals in courts," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.
Mr. Ahmadinejad did not elaborate, but he apparently was referring to the U.S. military's use of artillery shells packed with depleted uranium, which is far less radioactive than natural uranium and is left over from the process of enriching uranium for use as nuclear fuel.
Since the Iraq war started in 2003, American forces have fired at least 120 tons of shells packed with depleted uranium, an extremely dense material used by the U.S. and British militaries to penetrate tank armor. Once fired, the shells melt, vaporize and turn to dust.
"Who in the world are you to accuse Iran of suspicious nuclear-armed activity?" Mr. Ahmadinejad said during a nationally televised ceremony marking the 36th anniversary of the establishment of Iran's volunteer Basij paramilitary force.
Iran has been under intense international pressure to curb its nuclear program, which the United States claims is part of an effort to produce nuclear weapons. Iran denies such claims and says its program is aimed at generating electricity.
Iran insists that it has the right to fully develop the program, including enrichment of nuclear fuel -- a process that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors or atomic bombs.
State-run TV said more than 9 million Basij members formed human chains in different parts of the country to mark their militia's anniversary. Thousands linked hands to make a 12-mile chain along an expressway in northern Tehran.
It is estimated that the Basij comprise 15 percent of Iran's population, or about 10 million people.
Meanwhile, a leading German newsweekly reported that Iran has offered North Korea oil and natural gas as payment for help in developing nuclear missiles.
A senior Iranian official traveled to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, during the second week of October to make the offer, the Der Spiegel magazine reported yesterday, citing unidentified Western intelligence sources.
It was not clear what North Korea's response was, the magazine said.
Diplomats and intelligence sources say Iran is pushing ahead with plans to enrich uranium in defiance of international pressure to stop developing sensitive nuclear technology to calm fears it is seeking nuclear weapons.
Iran's Shahab-3 missiles are based on North Korea's No-Dong rockets and Pyongyang is Tehran's most important partner in developing missile technology, Der Spiegel said.
Biting the Hand
Why is the ADL going after evangelical Christians?
BY DAVID BROG
Friday, November 25, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
Earlier this month, Abraham Foxman took to the podium to address the key members of his Anti-Defamation League, the leading watchdog of anti-Semitism in America. In somber tones, Mr. Foxman sounded the alarm over the "key domestic challenge to the American Jewish community and to our democratic values." The threat he described was neither Islamic terror nor assimilation but a much more imaginative one. "Make no mistake," Mr. Foxman warned, "we are facing an emerging Christian Right leadership that intends to 'Christianize' all aspects of American life, from the halls of government to the libraries, to the movies, to recording studios, to the playing fields and locker room of professional, collegiate and amateur sports, from the military to SpongeBob SquarePants."
Mr. Foxman is an intelligent and experienced man. Thus one must marvel at his ability to scan the nation and determine that the key challenge facing American Jews comes from socially conservative Christians. The fate of beloved cartoon characters aside, there are very serious threats facing American Jews today, and they have nothing to do with social conservatives.
Al Qaeda and the home-grown cells who serve it have targeted Jews around the world, including in America. In 2002, the FBI warned Jewish leaders that al Qaeda was plotting to attack domestic Jewish targets with gasoline trucks. In 2003, the Bush administration raised the homeland-terror threat level to orange due in part to a large volume of threats against Jewish targets. And in August, the Justice Department secured the indictments of four American Muslims in a conspiracy to attack Los Angeles synagogues.
Outside of physical threats from without, Jewish life in America is seriously threatened from within by assimilation. The intermarriage rate has grown in every decade since 1970 and has now reached an alarming 47%. Only one-third of the children of these intermarriages are raised Jewish. These statistics, combined with the very low fertility rates of those Jews who do marry other Jews, explain why the Jewish population in America is steadily shrinking.
Far from being the source of such threats to American Jews, Christians are actually important allies in combating them. Conservative Christians surpass Jews as proponents of a robust war on terror at home and abroad. And when it comes to assimilation, these Christians demonstrate the only solution by their example. Evangelicals take their faith seriously: They go to church, teach religion to their children, and act on their faith through good works. If Jews followed their lead, assimilation rates would plummet.
More troubling than Mr. Foxman's misdiagnosis of the threats facing American Jews is his mischaracterization of Christian goals. Just because Christian activists are motivated by their Christian faith does not mean that they are seeking to "Christianize" America. As every schoolchild knows, Christian churches have been the driving force behind some of the most important social movements in America, from the abolition of slavery to the civil-rights movement. What is relevant, of course, is not a policy's source or motivation but its merits.
And there is indeed merit to the agenda pursued by Christian conservatives. Evangelical Christians are rock-solid supporters of Israel--a fact that the Jewish community has belatedly begun to acknowledge and appreciate. What remains unacknowledged, and certainly not appreciated, is the fact that socially conservative Christians have become the leading proponents of Judeo-Christian values--and, therefore, traditional Jewish values--in America.
When Christians recognize that human beings are influenced by the surrounding culture, and therefore seek to persuade the entertainment industry to stop degrading that culture, they are taking a stand for Jewish values. When Christians fight genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and raise funds for victims of natural disasters around the globe, they are acting out Jewish values. And yes, when Christians stand up for the sanctity of human life and oppose euthanasia or abortion as birth control, they are protecting the most fundamental of Jewish values. Jews are of course free to differ on all of the above issues, but they should not wrap themselves in the flag of Judaism when they do so.
In one of the most poignant moments in the Hebrew Bible, King David's son Absalom is killed while leading a failed rebellion against his father. When David weeps for his son, David's top lieutenant, Joab, argues that the king is disgracing all those who have just risked their lives to defend him, admonishing: "You love your enemies and hate your friends." American Jews have much to learn from this story. In some ways we are Absalom, rebelling against the conservative beliefs of our religious forebears. And in other ways we are David, mourning the loss of a beloved but destructive family member--liberalism--while ignoring the true friends that surround us and preserve us. Either way, we need to follow Joab's advice and dry our eyes.