Where?

And what makes you think they’re afraid of being criticized by the Americans?

Because they demanded we stop as a condition of negotiations? Because our criticism leads to things like sanctions? Do you think the Soviets liked being called an evil empire? The appearance of morality matters a lot.

Do you honestly think they were afraid to jail dissidents when Bush was in office?

I think they found our criticism very inconvenient. How nice for them that’s apparently going to stop now.

Come on, Dave, you’re smarter than that.

Come on Dean, think about this for a second. Let’s say your neighbor has been sexually molesting his kids, and you’ve been complaining about it loudly and publicly. You two have been fighting over other things too (say, trees he’s been cutting down that are on your property). He says “OK, well we can talk about the trees, but first you have to stop criticizing what I do with my kids.” You think he’s bothered?

Considering that in the speech the President DID in fact criticize them for such things, what is your basis for saying this?

And what makes you think they’re afraid of being criticized by the Americans? Do you honestly think they were afraid to jail dissidents when Bush was in office? Come on, Dave, you’re smarter than that.

It’s just so sad to think what could have been…

(via Gateway Pundit)

They’re as rigged as the mullahs need them to be. Last time out, the reformers gave up and just boycotted them.

This video accomplishes absolutely nothing useful. It’s not objectionable, it’s just a bunch of meaningless fluff that totally ignores the major issues in Iran.

The message here is clear: the Iranian gov’t should feel they can now arrest, torture, and murder dissidents while building nuclear weapons and sponsoring terrorism, and Washington will be much less likely to criticize them for it.

The mullahs are starting to recognize political life is transitory.

What fills the void beside nukes and threats ?

Obama-speech equals opening gambit, but Mideast uses different parchesi board.

Diplomacy is the art of psychological warfare.

Obama is really irish american. Huh ?.

Who’s in charge of the Hillary/Bill/Obama/Teleprompter psychodrama ?

If Hillary is great as the Sec of State, can we assume Pelosi is not a nightmare ?

Has Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used up his international, microphone air miles ?

Sorry, there’s only nine top ten thought experiments.

Oops,

How do we help these ordinary Iranians undermine the Mullahs in power?

Answer,

Send their blood samples to the CDC

I think there is a lotta common ground between ordinary Iranians and American values. How do we help these ordinary Iranians undermine the Mullahs in power?

–HankB

I think this was a transparent and blatant attempt to influence the Iranian elections, and that in and of itself would be enough for me to be angry if I were Iranian; remember Chinese contributions to US campaigns?

Replace Obama with Bush, the stuff about the Nowruz video with the “Axis of Evil” speech, and “screw up the region coding on those DVDs to the UK” with “sit around reading My Pet Goat on 9/11″, and see if this doesn’t look familiar.

Point being, I think people are increasingly seeing that just about any President, no matter how well-spoken and heavily armored against criticism of their choices of personal conduct and vocabulary, will be subject to the kind of scrutiny over his gaffes that will turn him into a complete imbecile if the one telling the story wishes to paint it thus; and no matter how clumsy and feckless the team with which he surrounds himself, will be able to come up with flashes of timeless brilliance that will appear in retrospect to be grand milestones in our history.

If only we could look at every Presidency in remote hindsight while it’s still happening.