McCain Gets Basic Fact About Iran Wrong.
The press still talk of this guy as a foreign policy expert. He's repeating the lie that Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" despite the fact that he did no such thing, and now he's claiming that Ahmadinejad is the "leader" of Iran.
From the CIA Factbook:Conservative clerical forces established a theocratic system of government with ultimate political authority vested in a learned religious scholar referred to commonly as the Supreme Leader who, according to the constitution, is accountable only to the Assembly of Experts.
How many times is McCain allowed to spew such ignorance before we stop pretending that he's an expert on foreign policy? The man simply doesn't know what he's talking about.
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5 comments:
Yawn.
Wipe Israel 'off the map' Iranian says: New leader revives an old rhetorical tack
Ahmadinejad: Wipe Israel off map
Iran leader defends Israel remark: Iran's president has defended his widely criticised call for Israel to be "wiped off the map"
Oh look, they also refer to Ahmadinemad as "leader" of Iran, along with millioins of other people (Google search Ahmadinejad leader). Everyone knows the theocracy pulls the strings, but Ahmadinemad is the leader put out to the world by that theocracy.
So what you are attempting to do, is take common vernacular, and paint McCain's use of this vernacular as somehow uninformed and out of the norm. That's disingenuous.
As for the "wipe off the map" thing, I've read the Iran apologist sites so I know what the argument is. The facts however are that the mainstream news overwhelmingly reports quote as "wipe off the map", so McCain and anyone else is not misguided when they use the term, whether or not someone hacks together some alternate but essentially the same translation.
Maybe you could email McCain's campaign the links to the apologist sites that parse the different ways Ahmadinemad's statements over the years can be translated.
You need to work better on your research Jason, the second site you link to actually makes essentially the same argument that I am making. He didn't say what it's been claimed that he said.
The facts however are that the mainstream news overwhelmingly reports quote as "wipe off the map", so McCain and anyone else is not misguided when they use the term, whether or not someone hacks together some alternate but essentially the same translation.
If your argument is that McCain is ignorant on yet another foreign policy subject simply because it's been wrongly stated in the paper then you're hardly selling him as a foreign policy expert.
And the quotes do not add up to the same thing. To quote the second website you linked to:
"The Guardian's Jonathan Steele cites four different translations, from professors to the BBC to the New York Times and even pro-Israel news outlets, in none of those translations is the word "map" used. The closest translation to what the Iranian President actually said is, "The regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time," or a narrow relative thereof. In no version is the word "map" used or a context of mass genocide or hostile military action even hinted at."
This is saying that the occupation must fall like the Soviet Union and Apartheid fell. To say he wanted "to wipe Israel off the map" is not simply a bad translation, it's an outright lie.
And the use of the word "map" - according to your own source - was The New York Times, who have since backed away from that translation. And the BBC, who again you link to, have since accepted that they made a mistake. Again, this is all in the second story which you linked to.
That McCain is ignorant of this fact, weeks after everyone else has discovered it, says he's either not on top of his brief or he's being disingenuous.
The second link is the apologist site I read (although not the one I meant to link to with that particular link), obviously. Only the Iranian backers and apologists continue to make this claim however.
In fact, the NY Times has the following to say on the subject...
But translators in Tehran who work for the president's office and the foreign ministry disagree with them. All official translations of Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement, including a description of it on his Web site (www.president.ir/eng/), refer to wiping Israel away. Sohrab Mahdavi, one of Iran's most prominent translators, and Siamak Namazi, managing director of a Tehran consulting firm, who is bilingual, both say "wipe off" or "wipe away" is more accurate than "vanish" because the Persian verb is active and transitive.
The second translation issue concerns the word "map." Khomeini's words were abstract: "Sahneh roozgar." Sahneh means scene or stage, and roozgar means time. The phrase was widely interpreted as "map," and for years, no one objected. In October, when Mr. Ahmadinejad quoted Khomeini, he actually misquoted him, saying not "Sahneh roozgar" but "Safheh roozgar," meaning pages of time or history. No one noticed the change, and news agencies used the word "map" again.
Ahmad Zeidabadi, a professor of political science in Tehran whose specialty is Iran-Israel relations, explained: "It seems that in the early days of the revolution the word 'map' was used because it appeared to be the best meaningful translation for what he said. The words 'sahneh roozgar' are metaphorical and do not refer to anything specific. Maybe it was interpreted as 'book of countries,' and the closest thing to that was a map. Since then, we have often heard 'Israel bayad az naghshe jographya mahv gardad' — Israel must be wiped off the geographical map. Hard-liners have used it in their speeches."
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So did Iran's president call for Israel to be wiped off the map? It certainly seems so.
So call me crazy, but if I'm looking for a credible source on this, I'm going to go with the people who have no apparent political axe to grind. Basically, it doesn't seem like McCain's the ignorant one here.
So call me crazy, but if I'm looking for a credible source on this, I'm going to go with the people who have no apparent political axe to grind.
Okay, you're crazy if you think that the first news organisation who used the word "map" are the people with no axe to grind here.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the questioner is not asking whether there's anyone on Earth who thinks Ahmadinejad is the leader of Iran, he's asking why McCain keeps mentioning Ahmadinejad rather than Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man who actually has the power to make decisions.
McCain is arguing that Ahadinejad has the power to make these decisions which is simply wrong.
This is how Wikipedia describes Ahmadinejad's actual power:
He is the highest directly elected official in the country; however, according to Article 113[4] of Constitution of Iran, he has much less power than the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Iran and has the final word in all aspects of foreign and domestic policies.
It is highly disturbing that McCain continues to argue that Ahmadinejad rather than Khamenei holds the power in Iran, as it's simply not true.
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