Could it be any clear how bad it is going to get? If you deny the holocaust and get away with it on the world stage, then there is no truth, no value for truth or man .....only the further descent into depravity and vicious evil.
Biden will be attending this conference as well. His dhimmi views on Iran are no secret. He has a history of stumping for Iran. It is no accident President Hussein picked Biden. Most folks didn't get it. I did.
Good men will rise up against this, I know -- they email me. But at what cost? (photo shop hat tip Chad)
A senior Iranian official called President Obama's election a "golden opportunity" for the U.S. to improve relations with Iran but condemned past American behavior in a speech that underscored the difficulty of overcoming the bad blood between the two adversaries.
"In the past, the U.S. has burned many bridges, but a new White House can rebuild them," the speaker of Iran's parliament, Ali Larijani, told diplomats and military officers at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy. "This requires new pragmatic strategies based on respect and fair play. The carrot and stick must be discarded."
Mr. Larijani, formerly Iran's lead nuclear negotiator, praised George Mitchell's appointment as special envoy to the Middle East as a positive signal.
Mr. Larijani's appearance was eagerly awaited because it marked the first time since the U.S. election that a top Iranian official was in the same room as senior American policy makers such as retired Gen. James Jones, Mr. Obama's national-security adviser.
Near the end of his speech, Mr. Larijani astonished many in the audience by arguing that there could "be different perspectives on the Holocaust." The remark was surprising because Iran has been careful about commenting on the Holocaust in settings such as Munich. In addition, Mr. Larijani is considered a relative moderate who has made an effort not to discuss the Holocaust here.
Larijani a moderate? By whose standard? Hitler's? Who writes this garbage?
The comment prompted an angry challenge from French politician Pierre Lellouche, who said denying the Holocaust is a crime in France.
Isn't it a crime in Germany. Arrest Larijani!
"In Iran, we don't have the same sensitivities," Mr. Larijani replied.
The tenor of Mr. Larijani's remarks Friday offered further reminders of the challenges facing President Obama in promoting dialogue with Iran.
President Obama has said he is open to direct talks with Iran, arguing that the Bush administration's policy of isolating the Islamic republic failed. He is expected to appoint a special envoy for Iran within weeks. The president has reiterated former President George W. Bush's demands that Iran abandon its nuclear program and cease supporting armed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Tehran has refused to consider U.S. demands. This week, it launched its first domestically built and propelled satellite into orbit, sparking U.S. and European fears that the technology could lead to developing advanced ballistic missiles.
Vice President Joe Biden will address the conference Saturday, but it was unclear if Mr. Larijani would remain. Mr. Biden is expected to announce that the U.S. is willing to reconsider plans for a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe, a move that would be welcomed by Russia.
Mr. Larijani ran through a critique of past and present U.S. actions in the Middle East, from the Central Intelligence Agency-led coup in 1953 that toppled a democratically elected Iranian president to Washington's support for Israel during its recent wars against Islamic militants in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Larijani held up photos of dead Palestinian children and accused the U.S. of a double standard when it came to Israel. "Do you honestly expect this pain to go away?" he asked. "The other party must accept its mistakes and change strategies."
Israel, gird your loins.
UPDATE: Biden Pledges Talks with Iran in Munich Speech Ken Timmerman, Newsmax
Joe Biden made his first official overseas trip as vice president on Saturday, pledging at a security conference in Munich, Germany. that the new administration intends to hold official talks with Iran.
"We will be willing to talk to Iran and to offer a very clear choice: Continue down your current course and there will be pressure and isolation; abandon the illicit nuclear program and your support for terrorism and there will be meaningful incentives," Biden said.
But White House officials dismissed rumors that Biden planned to have quiet meetings with Iranian officials who were attending the Munich conference.
“The vice president has no plans to meet with any Iranian officials while in Munich,” an administration official told Newsmax.
Speaking in Tehran at a press conference with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal last week, Iranian foreign minister Manoucher Mottaki said that Iran would “make our views known” at the Munich conference, but had no intention of holding direct talks with Biden at that time.
“Resumption of relations with the U.S. under the new circumstances is of prime importance and we are now studying the change of attitude and U.S. policies to make our views known, but we have no plan to do so at the upcoming Munich security conference,” Mottaki said, as the Hamas leader looked on.
Iran’s leaders have been holding back from direct talks with the U.S. as officials and advisers to the Obama administration “negotiate with themselves in public,” said Sardar Haddad, a U.S.-based Iranian dissident.
“Why should they agree to anything when they can sit back and watch the U.S. negotiate a better deal for them on television?” he told Newsmax.
On Friday, Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani took a hard line, reiterating the demands put forward last week by president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
[Read Ahmadinejad’s chilly response to Obama’s offer of direct talks. Go here now.]
[...]
Instead, every fresh statement from Washington about the Obama administration’s willingness to talk seems to be taken as a sign of weakness in Tehran, where Iran’s leaders just keep on upping the ante.
“As long as America sees itself as the ruler of the world the slogan of change is a lie,” Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told worshipers in a sermon at Friday prayers.
“Obama’s remarks over the past two weeks show that his promise of change is a lie because he is repeating [former President George W.) Bush’s mistakes by saying that the U.S. is committed to the security of Israel and that sanctions against Iran still exist.
“America should know that the world will not be deceived by these gestures.”
Instead, the Obama White House “should bring a real change to its policies,” he said.
Khatami is the brother of former President Mohammad Khatami, touted as a “moderate” in the West.
AEI scholar Danielle Pletka acknowledged that the new administration has the authority to carry out its pledge to talk to the Iranian regime.
“OK, we’re going to sit down with the Iranians,” she said. “But we haven’t really talked seriously or debated the issues at hand, what the end game is, what our expectations are, and what we hope will happen along the way.”
For example, she said, Tehran “wants a dominant regional role. Do we really want to see that? Do we really want Iran to have a seat at the table of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks?”
Then she warned that talking to Iran also had its price, and that Iranian preconditions to talks could be so exorbitant that the U.S. would “lose all the ground” it had gained with the European allies over the past five years in crafting a common front to oppose Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
“Everybody here recognizes there is a time line,” she said. “There is an urgency to sitting down and discussing with the Iranians because there is an urgency to moving them away from the final movement when they cross the threshold and actually have nuclear weapons in hand.”
The real question, she said, was “how long the Obama administration is willing to sit down and talk with the Iranians while they continue to move forward with their program? It’s not an unreasonable question to ask.”
And one that the Obama administration has pointedly refrained from answering
until now.
Very bad. All of it. Islamic jihad is dictating the terms.
