Bearing in mind that she once called Hillary Clinton "a monster", one next may wonder how she would (relatively speaking) classify the leaders of the major rogue nations and terror sponsors around the world.
Now let's see... what's worse than a monster...? Oh, right! Not talking to a monster!
In her June 2008 Time magazine piece, "Engage your enemies", Power wrote that,
"John McCain and President Bush have double-teamed Barack Obama (whom I formerly advised), attacking his willingness to talk to adversaries like Cuba, Iran and Syria."Did she say "adversaries"? From their own actions and statements, I'd call them a little worse than that!
Regarding British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's 1938 dealings with Hitler, Power continues,
"He was unprepared, unsophisticated and ultimately unsuccessful in preventing World War II."And, in what could be a premonition about Team Obama, she writes,
"Chamberlain's desire to be the man to save Europe blinded him to the impossibility of brokering 'peace in our time' with a man of Hitler's savage aims. He assured himself that Hitler could be trusted.""Impossibility"? "Savage aims"? That sounds strangely familiar today.
Perhaps Chamberlain should have checked with his intelligence officials or simply stopped by a major library before trotting off to the belly of the beast. Well before 1938, Hitler's aims should have been crystal clear to anyone in power.
They had only to read an interview Hitler gave in 1922 (1922!) to journalist Josef Hell to learn his true aims.
Hitler's Conversation with Josef Hell, 1922Hitler spoke these words a full sixteen years before Chamberlain went to see him in Germany - a time when Hitler had already been in power (with dictatorial powers, no less) for five years!When Hell asked Hitler what he intended doing if he ever had full freedom of action against the Jews, his response was:"If I am ever really in power, the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most important job. As soon as I have power, I shall have gallows after gallows erected, for example, in Munich on the Marienplatz-as many of them as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink. They will stay hanging as long as hygienically possible. As soon as they are untied, then the next group will follow and that will continue until the last Jew in Munich is exterminated. Exactly the same procedure will be followed in other cities until Germany is cleansed of the last Jew!"
- (quoted in John Toland, Adolf Hitler. London: Book Club Associates, 1977, p.116)
When you look at a Holocaust time line, it's very interesting and disturbing to note what had taken place in Germany just during the five years before Chamberlain first went to Germany in September. A few things stand out:
- January 30, 1933 - Hitler named Chancellor of Germany by President Hindenburg
- March 22, 1933 - Nazis open Dachau concentration camp near Munich, to be followed by Buchenwald near Wiemar in central Germany, Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northern Germany, and Ravensbrück for women
- Sept 29, 1933 - Nazis prohibit Jews from owning land
- Oct 4, 1933 - Jews are prohibited from being newspaper editors
- May 17, 1934 - Jews not allowed national health insurance
- July 22, 1934 - Jews are prohibited from getting legal qualifications
- Aug 2, 1934 - German President von Hindenburg dies. Hitler becomes Führer
- Sept 15, 1935 - Nuremberg Race Laws against Jews decreed
- February 10, 1936 - The German Gestapo is placed above the law
- March 1936 - SS Death's head division is established to guard concentration camps
- Nov 8, 1937 - "Eternal Jew" traveling exhibition opens in Munich
- July 25, 1938 - Jewish doctors prohibited by law from practicing medicine
- Sept 27, 1938 - Jews are prohibited from all legal practices
- June 24, 2005 - Ahmadinejad "elected" President of Iran
- October 26, 2005 - At a conference in Tehran called "The World without Zionism," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls Israel a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map." While many Western governments, including those of the U.S., Canada and Britain, were quick to denounce Ahmadinejad's words, most Arab leaders were silent. Ahmadinejad would later stand by his comments, calling the criticism from the West "invalid."
- December 8, 2005 - Ahmadinejad says Israel should move to Europe
- December 12, 2005 - Ahmadinejad says Israel will be "wiped out"
- December 14, 2005 - Ahmadinejad provokes more international controversy by calling the Holocaust a "myth"
- January 2006 - Iran breaks IAEA seals at its Natanz nuclear research facility
- April 14, 2006 - During a conference in support of Palestinians, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls Israel a "rotten, dried tree" that is "heading toward annihilation"
- February 2006 - Iran's best-selling newspaper, Hamshahri, launches the International Holocaust Cartoons Contest
- November 2006 - A Moroccan is announced as the winner of Iran's Holocaust cartoon contest
- December 2006 - Iran hosts a controversial conference on the Holocaust; delegates include Holocaust deniers such as former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and French professor Robert Faurisson; Nazi sympathizers; and anti-Zionists such as British Rabbi Aharon Cohen. At the conference, Ahmadinejad says, "they have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets"
- February 2007 - IAEA says Iran failed to meet a deadline to suspend uranium enrichment, exposing Tehran to possible new sanctions
- April 2007 - President Ahmadinejad says Iran can produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale. IAEA says Iran has begun making nuclear fuel in its underground uranium enrichment plant. It also says that Iran has started up more than 1,300 centrifuge machines
- May 2007 - IAEA says Iran could develop a nuclear weapon in three to eight years if it so chooses
- October 29, 2007 - Iranian Revolutionary Guard general threatens suicide attacks in Persian Gulf
- October 31, 2007 - Ahmadinejad says millions of Iranians ready for "martyrdom"
- April 8, 2008 - Iran says it has begun installing 6,000 new centrifuges at its main nuclear plant in Natanz
- July 2008 - Iran test-fires a new version of the Shahab-3, a long-range missile it says is capable of hitting targets in Israel
- January 27, 2009 - Iran's top military commander, Maj. Gen. Hasan Firuzabadi, spoke openly in support of Ahmadinejad's reelection
So even if he is not the supreme leader now, who's to say whether he or his supporters may stage a coup if they sense that the regime is in danger or weakened?
Even if an Ahmadinejad coup does not take place, and even if he is not reelected, the threat is no less severe. Consider these excerpts from the wide-ranging publication from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:
"Even before Ahmadinejad himself spoke about wiping Israel off the map, the Iranian regime used such expressions but did not leave any doubt about what stood behind this phraseology. By juxtaposing its call for Israel’s elimination with a Shahab 3 missile during a military parade, the Iranian regime itself has clarified that these expressions about Israel’s future do not describe a long-term historical process, in which the Israeli state collapses by itself like the former Soviet Union, but rather the actual physical destruction of Israel as a result of a military strike".
"Khamenei has made statements about Israel similar to Ahmadinejad. In a Friday sermon on December 15, 2000 (shown on Iranian TV), he declared: 'Iran’s position, which was first expressed by the Imam [Khomeini] and stated several times by those responsible, is that the cancerous tumor called Israel must be uprooted from the region.'"
"(General) Yahya Rahim Safavi, 55, one of the “hard-core” founders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and its former commander, is now senior advisor to Supreme Leader Khamenei. In a speech in February 2008, he said: 'With God’s help the time has come for the Zionist regime’s death sentence.'”Yes, all this seems strangely familiar...
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Ahmadinejad time line sources:
