The president of Iran is truly a nut, there's no denying that. He's a true blue fundamentalist but with less strategic sense than Khomeni. He may think to himself that he wants a war, but is every bit as hesistant to actually start one as the United States is. We're crowded up by the tens of thousands on their eastern and western borders. If they wanted a fight they'd start launching low-level attacks at our troops. The 'Islamic Republic' of Iran has not started a war in its entire existence. If we wanted a war we'd do the same--Bush could have secretly begun operations in Iran a while ago, like Nixon did in Cambodia. Neither side really wants a war (excepting extreme elements who as of yet do not have decisive say), but both sides want to play the role of national hero in order to boost their domestic influence.

Getting nuclear weapons is sadly for Iran not a nutty, crazed idea anymore but from a very realistic point of view crucial to their survival. They have hostile nuclear powers on all sides (Israel, the U.S., Pakistan, India). That doesn't mean we have to accept their having nuclear weapons or let them do it but it does mean that we can't take it as a sure sign that the whole regime wants the world to come to an end.

Why do people persist with the myth that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he wanted "Israel wiped off the map"?

Lost in Translation http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathansteele/2006/06/post155.html

Never mind what Hitchens said, look at how he deals with other views (even though they are fact). For all his self inflated eloquence he is just a bully at heart. Someone should send him to his room with no dinner.

Why do people persist with the myth that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he wanted "Israel wiped off the map"?

Christopher Hitchens? Telling a lie? In support of the next war the neocons want to fight?!!

Say it ain't so!

I'm not by any stretch of the imagination a conspiracy theorist, but I have heard from friends in the military that some of our troops in Iraq are being diverted into covert ops in Iran for that very purpose. The desire is to foment a war, and simultaneously attempt to take out key positions and personnel with hidden spec ops teams.

Part of me wants to not believe it but frankly you can't put anything past this administration.

There was a very interesting article in Newsweek about how Bush has begun to spin the Iraq war as a "quest for the soul of America". Which is exactly what was done with Vietnam. They have a whole dogma package they want people to buy into. Sad thing is, they don't believe it themselves.

"Why do people persist with the myth that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he wanted 'Israel wiped off the map'?"

You're simply being pedantic. I can just imagine the people of Israel breathing a collective sigh of relief. "He didn't say 'wiped off the map'. He said 'vanish from the page of time'! Let's all go hug us some terrorists!"

Yes joe he is paying attention to details and you should too. Words matter, unless of course you've made up your mind and don't want to be confused by the facts.

"Yes joe he is paying attention to details and you should too. Words matter, unless of course you've made up your mind and don't want to be confused by the facts."

Hey kids, what logical fallacy is this?

Honestly I do find Christopher Hitchens a bit self styled intellect who likes to find flaws and play with words out of thesaurus. Funny enough his so called facts of the matter are purely momentary. He sounds (read looks) like as if he was neglected as a child and desperately deserves attention. No personal offence intended.

In his own logic from another article against Fahrenheit 9/11 documentary published in 2004, either you support Bush or you don't. Either you support current policies or you don't.

He is simply making complex statements and not answering any questions. Most of his comments are to draw attention to his view and him.

The worst that he could do and I conclude, is to insult the audience by showing the middle finger and very rudely insulting them on the face by doubting their intelligence and choice to laugh at a joke.

Sorry Mr. Christopher Hitchens, but you need to get a life.

Oh! BTW I am not even American.

Hey norm I think you oversimplify the matter by claiming that Iran wants a nuclear weapon. While there are factions (Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi) within the Iranian government that support the stockpiling of nuclear weapons the vast majority do not. In fact the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa banning the use of atomic bombs. It would be inconceivable for the Iranian president or any faction of the Iranian government to build the bomb against a religious decree. It would be the same as The United States arm forces shelling an American city because they believed a terrorist cell existed there. I believe that Iran is attempting to pressure United States into lifting decade old sanctions against the Islam Republic. This combined with the fact that Iran is energy starved (lack of refinery capabilities) is leading to Iran’s insistence on building atomic power plants.

Maybe this is too meta, but I think it's important to acknowledge that to even argue with them over their arguments for war is to lose: http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3-77-1542.jsp

Shorter version: democracy tends to slackness; the best remedy for slackness is war (never mind the casus).

Hitches is a sad character. I can remember when he had more brains and less posturing. Isn't he another former Trotskyist gone neo-con.

I gotta say, the line between "vanish from the page of time" and "wiped off the map" seems fine at best. At this point parsing one sentence, as Steele seems to do, is basically a rudderless approach, and one should really try to look at the statement within the context of the speech as a whole. I dunno, does anyone have a translation of the speech? It would also be nice, of course, to have some understanding of the context in which this speech was given -- who the audience was, etc.

Expanding upon this, we know -- or at least, any even vaguely aware American citizen or political observer should know -- that quotes are taken out of context by the opposition as a matter of course within American political debate. Individuals often have their words stripped of context, twisted against them, and used to construct grotesque charicatures of their character and their positions. These are (more or less) law-abiding American citizens we're talking talking about. To deny this is to embrace the most extreme foolishness of political naivetes.

Given this, we must assume that this applies to foreign leaders as well, and we must be vigilant any time someone attempts to ascribe all a person's motives to two or three selectively picked sentences. Hutchins's critique (which, to be fair, may itself be abbreviated) boils down to a handful of phrases that Ahmadinejad has thrown out. To attempt to construct a picture of an entire country out of a few sentences uttered by one man... It's just... it's just a staggeringly myopic approach. Even if Ahmadinejad's words can be taken at face value, and interpreted as a sincere desire to destroy Israel (or, as Hitchens projects, to start WWIII), they in no meaningful way suggest that he seriously intends to do so, that his country has the capacity to do so, or that he has the political capital to do so. Here's a shocker: sometimes politicians say essentially baseless things because they think it will further consolidate their base, or reinforce the perception of their power. See also: Bush, Hussein. Seriously, this is exactly the same kind of wishful intellectual dishonesty that got us into our current situation in Iraq.

All of that having been said, it would be interesting to see Hitchens's response to Maher. I've seen this clip on a couple of blogs and I've seen Hitchens's response to Maher's audience, but not to Maher's actual critique of his argument.

Average_Joe, I may be being pedantic but when a world war is the potential outcome being pedantic is a lot better than persisting with a myth, which is what you're still doing when you selectively quote (and misquote) Ahmadinejad. In fact the entire quote is:

"the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time"

That's VERY different to saying "Israel must vanish from the page of time"

Funkyguru pwned Christopher Hitchens quite badly. Any rebuttal of equal eloquence is welcomed.

I'll give it to Hitchens, he seems to have sobered up and dried out a bit.

The last time I saw him he was bleary and puffy and red-faced and in need of sleep.

Certainly, keeping himself healthy will increase his value as a LYING SHILL for the parasitic merchants of death that are taking over the world.

As for the "wiping off the map" question, I think the real response is very similar to Maher's remarks that Bush also believes the Messiah is coming for the end of the world soon. Namely, unless I am mistaken, both the US and Israel have threatened to attack Iran with nuclear weapons. So, even if Ahmadinejad said he wanted "Israel wiped off the map," is it really any different than Bush and any others who want to "nuke" Iran?

But he just didn't, so there's no comparison to be made.

whoa, nationelectric, hats off, well done.

jonathan, thanks!

Ahmadinejad did say he wanted Israel wiped off the map. The NYT has a picture of a billboard in Tehran with a picture of Nesrallah and Ahmadinejad's quote translated into Arabic and English. It's here but you have to pay to view it. Those are the exact words on the billboard, put their by the Iranian government. I'll take their word for it. Still, if Hitchens is arguing for an invasion of Iran here, then he's completely left the planet, but we have no idea what he's actually arguing because the clip is too short.

Hitchens is a great writer, but he keeps picking the wrong fights. As happy as many people were to see the end of Hussein, the argument about Iraq, even amongst supporters for the war, was about strategy and logistics. Hell, from the hatred most Muslims had for Hussein, there was even some basis for the argument that they might be grateful (Shock and Awe and Abu Graib made short work of that.) Watching the Bush administration invade Iraq was like watching The Lil' Rascals Go to War. Hitchens should have been agreeing with almost everything Maher said--he's said the same things himself. But he's caught on the idea of having to defend his support of the war. What's the problem with saying, "I was wrong?" It's not as if Hitchens actually likes Bush, or has any use for the religious right.

Hitchens is not a neo-con, nor are the people on the left who supported the war (most of whom have now admitted it was a mistake.) Hussein, after all, modelled himself on Hitler and Stalin (he kept a picture of Stalin in his office.) But instead of just taking out Hussein, that fumbling idiot Rumsfeld took out the whole government, and various factions are determined to see that nothing replaces it unless it's their own people.