Not Wiped Off the Map (2)

More confirmation that the "wiped off the map" translation is completely bogus. Just more propaganda from the propaganda machine.

Unfortunately, the "wiped off the map" quote is a conerstone of this attempt to make a legal case against Iran published in the Washington Post.

The writers (David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey) made a simalar case for war against Iraq based on WMD, which we now know was also false.

It would be nice if the Washington Post took a more skeptical attitude this second time, considering the poor track record of these folks. But, that seems to be too much to ask.

Ask anyone in Washington, London or Tel Aviv if they can cite any phrase uttered by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the chances are high they will say he wants Israel "wiped off the map".

Again it is four short words, though the distortion is worse than in the Khrushchev case. ["We will bury you."] [Ahmadinejad's] remarks are not out of context. They are wrong, pure and simple. Ahmadinejad never said them. Farsi speakers have pointed out that he was mistranslated. The Iranian president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran's first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that "this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" just as the Shah's regime in Iran had vanished.

He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The "page of time" phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon. There was no implication that either Khomeini, when he first made the statement, or Ahmadinejad, in repeating it, felt it was imminent, or that Iran would be involved in bringing it about.

An [il]legal Case Against Iran

Guardian

Your Lying Eyes

I also like this:

But the propaganda damage was done, and western hawks bracket the Iranian president with Hitler as though he wants to exterminate Jews. At the recent annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful lobby group, huge screens switched between pictures of Ahmadinejad making the false "wiping off the map" statement and a ranting Hitler.