Oh, I'm talking about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. But it does sound like familiar rhetoric doesn't it?
“Our educational system has been affected by 150 years of secular thought and has raised thousands of people who hold Ph.D.’s,” he said. “Changing this system is not easy and we have to do it together.”
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments appeared to be part of a continuing crackdown on social and political freedoms that began with his election last year.
As part of the crackdown, about 110,000 illegal satellite dishes have been confiscated in the past five months, one senior official, Ahmad Roozbehani, was quoted in the news media as saying. Opposition channels that broadcast mostly out of the United States have a large audience in Iran.
The familiarities continue:
Some Iranians believe that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s hard line at home is an attempt to divert attention from his failure to deliver on campaign pledges.
“He promised to improve the economy and bring about more equality, but he has not been able to realize any of those pledges,” said Abbas Abdi, a political analyst in Tehran.
“He has failed to solve the economic problem and Iran’s nuclear case, and now he does not want people to accuse him of lying,’’ Mr. Abdi said. “He is bringing up other issues now to distract people from those failures.”
Back in the US, it's quite clear by now the first decade of the 21st century will be defined by terrorism and very little else. Here's some Bushspeak excerpts from the link:
As part of a series of speeches that coincide with the fifth anniversary of the attacks, the president again linked the war on terror with the war in Iraq - even in the face of escalating deaths of Iraqis in sectarian violence and fresh evidence of a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. The administration also released a new national strategy for combating terrorism, with Cabinet secretaries and congressional Republicans echoing Bush's message.
"Five years after our nation was attacked, the terrorist danger remains," Bush said in an address to the Military Officers Association of America in Washington. "We're on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront, and we'll accept nothing less than complete victory."
In a tactical and rhetorical shift, the president invoked the name of bin Laden 17 times to make his argument more vivid.
Wesley Clark had this to say:
"The majority party in power fails to understand the basic concept of fighting terror: We can't dry up the wellspring of hatred which is driving terrorist recruiting by making more enemies than friends," said retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, a former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces who ran for president as a Democrat in 2004.
Clark's is a refreshingly honest and sane voice in the absurd cacophony of political election year dick-wagging.
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