Well, Ahmedinajad hasn't got a say on foreign policy.
Also, "wiped off the page of time" is quite different from "wiped off the map". One has immediate punch, the other not so. if they were equivalent phrases then why do we hear the incorrect version more often........by people who are proposing military action against Iran......I wonder what may be going on.

I don't see those two phrases as being much different at all. How do you wipe a country made up of real people "off the pages of time" without destroying them?

The same way the Soviet Union was "destroyed". It was destroyed from within by the people not by military action from an outside invader.

Farsi is a flowery impressionist language and the words are not always taken literally. Often many words are strung together to emphasize an important, but simple concept. English translations of Farsi often fail to account for the symbolism of the language.

And in some instances the errors in translating Farsi are accidental.

So that whole "death to America" thing doesn't really mean anything?

That's a country that's still pissed off that the United States offered and did take Pahlavi into its care for a time. Need I remind you that 100,000 Iranians were sent to political prisons under the rule of Pahlavi, most of which were tortured and mistreated... or worse... killed...?

While I'm not happy with the current government in power, I think a change was needed. Pahlavi became more and more separated from the people and the power slowly poisoned his mind. He needed to be removed, but an Islamic Republic was not the correct substitute for his place.

Yeah well some of us are still pissed at Iran for taking our people hostage for 444 days then later electing one of the main conspirators as their president. How does that compare to reluctantly allowing a dying man access to medical treatment?

Just an emotional slogan... not national policy

I don't buy that.

A piece I found entertaining from Onion News that adresses the current concern with whatever nation we are currently pissed at in the Middle East.

MIDDLE EAST—With the Iraq war in its fifth year, the war in Afghanistan in its sixth, and conflict between Israel and the rest of the region continuing unabated for more than half a century, intelligence sources are warning that a new wave of violence in the Middle East may soon blah blah blah, etc. etc., you know the rest.
Enlarge Image http://www.theonion.com/content/file...st.article.jpg Yet another act of violence in response to something else terrible that occurred in, oh, let's say Basra.

"Tensions in the region are extremely high," said U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, who added the same old same old while answering reporters' questions. "We're disappointed by the events of the last few months, but we're confident that we're about to [yakety yakety yak]."
The U.N. has issued a strongly worded whatever denouncing someone or something presumably having to do with the vicious explosive things that raged across this, or shattered the predawn calm of that, or ripped suddenly through the other, killing umpteen innocent civilians in a Jerusalem bus or Beirut discotheque or Fallujah mosque or whatever it was this time.
Enlarge Image http://www.theonion.com/content/file...mp.article.jpg Either a car bomb killed people or a car hit a roadside bomb, killing people.

In the aftermath of a whole series of incidents, there have also been troubling reports of just fill in the blanks. Middle East experts say the still somehow worsening situation has inflamed age-old sectarian tensions between the Sunnis, Shiites, Semites, Kurds, Turks, Saudis, Persians, Wahhabis, radicals, extremists, Baathists, mullahs, clerics, et al, which is likely to lead to more gurgle-gurgle over the coming weeks and months.
A certain number of U.S. troops were also killed somewhere in some tragic fashion, while a much greater number were wounded. Meanwhile, impoverished or oppressed supporters of whichever faction carried out the attack or ambush probably celebrated, angering an angry U.S. public that is already angry. Locals are calling for an investigation into excessive force or outright corruption by military or political officials on one of the 15 sides of the various conflicts, although the implicated party has categorically denied wrongdoing, just like they always do, without fail, every time this happens, which is daily, it seems.
And in Afghanistan, the Taliban.
In Israel, Palestinians and Israelis escalated tensions and so on and so on ad infinitum, ad eternum, and some say, ad absurdum, and although Hamas released a statement condemning Israeli forces for the resulting civilian deaths, Israeli officials say the teens were armed with rocket launchers, though it doesn't really matter.
Also, Ahmadinejad, Iran's nuclear program, bin Laden at large, Moqtada al-Sadr, Moqtada al-Sadr's militia, Fallujah, renegade mullahs, embedded and/or beheaded journalists, oil revenues, stockpiles of former Soviet armaments, freedom, racism, Halliburton, women's role in Islamic society, the Quran, withdrawing troops, economic disparities, Sikhs, Pakistanis, oil, rebuilding, stories of hope, the Saudi royal family, the Holy Land, insurgents, and the tragedy of Sept. 11th.
In an attempt to increase public support of whatever the **** it is he thinks he's doing, President Bush trotted out the same old whoop-de-do you've heard over and over at a solemn-yet-resolute speech attended by soldiers, or religious leaders, or firemen, or some mix of ethnic-looking people from one of those countries.
"We have to give this plan time to wop bop a loo bop, a wop bam boom, ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang," President Bush may as well have said. "May God [help/bless/save] the United States of America."

Then go outside and start yelling "Death to Iran!". Maybe burn a flag or two while you're at it.:up:

Iranian Political Prisoners:

-100,000 incarcerated
-tortured, mistreated, some even killed
-regularly beaten and starved
-most given life sentences

Hostages of the Iran Hostage Crisis:

-52 captured and held for 444 days
-mistreated and threatened
-denied some basic privileges
-13 released before January 1981


I'd sure as hell prefer to be a hostage over a political prisoner.:roll: That "dying man" was a butcher, another Caligula. Yes, he started out as a good leader, but over the years, he became more and more snobbish and distanced from his people. You know he held the twenty-fifth-hundredth anniversary of the Iranian monarchy not but a few miles from several villages that were basically consisting of nothing more than mud hovels? What's worse is that the people there were starving, AND he spent $100,000,000 on the celebration alone...

What's with the large font size SH? Trying to make up for some other size deficiency? :p

Re Shah comparisons. I'd say he was a saint compared to the thugs in power now in Iran.

Maybe he was but that wasn't the fault of the 52 innocent Americans the Iranians kidnapped and tortured for over a year. As far as i'm concerned Iran is the enemy of my country and will continue to be as long as the mullahs are in charge and the perpetrators of the embassy takeover are allowed to walk free.

I'd have to say no. No need for another war.

Damned if you go after them - and damned if you don't?

Should that represent a valid option - allowing to get oneself totally paralysed and depending on the good will that the regimes getting nukes just will act mercifully with mankind?

I don't know about you guys, but I feel that this way of allowing oneself getting paralysed by general "Angst" is unacceptable. I believe in taking the initiave and being strong - because only these two increase the number of your options to act. Being weak and feareful and undecided decreases the number of your options. Its better to have options available and not needing them - than to need them and not having them available.