Yesterday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his annual controversial speech at the United Nations General Assembly. This year, he said there was a theory "that some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy, and its grips on the Middle East, in order to save the Zionist regime."
Ahmadinejad said, "It is said that 3,000 people died," but hundreds of thousands died in Iraq and Afghanistatn...and that no suicide attackers were found in the 9/11 attacks. And when he said, "The majority of the American people as well as most nations and politicians around the world agree with this view," the U.S. delegation left. The delegation later issued the statement, "Rather than representing the aspirations and goodwill of the Iranian people, Mr Ahmadinejad has yet again chosen to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable."
President Obama, who had earlier offered to addressed the comments today, "For him to make a statement like that was inexcusable. It was offensive. It was hateful. And particularly for him to make the statement here in Manhattan, just a little north of Ground Zero, where families lost their loved ones, people of all faiths, all ethnicities who see this as the seminal tragedy of this generation."
As it happens, the mayor of 9/11, former mayor Rudy Giuliani, was at an anti-Mahmoud protest during Ahmadinejad's speech, "For too long, the world has acquiesced a regime in Iran that through mass murder, violence and intimidation has denied basic rights to your brothers and sisters and friends and relatives." According to the National Review, he was "animated and loud," rallying the crowd with, "Where’s our Ronald Reagan when we need him?... Ronald Reagan would have stood with the people of Iran…when they sought to protest the illegitimacies of the elections…as he did with the Solidarity movement in Poland." He
