Says 9/11 already used as pretext to kill 'hundreds of thousands' of people
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appearing at "The World Without Zionism" conference Oct. 26, 2005
The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks already have been used as the reason to attack and kill "hundreds of thousands" of people, according to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said he worries the attack will become another "false idol" like the Holocaust.
The comments came in a video statement on Iran's television news channel on Sept. 20, and were translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute's program to monitor television transmissions.
Ahmadinejad a year ago had been unable to visit the site where about 3,000 innocent Americans died when Islamic terrorists flew hijacked jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
So during his recent visit to the United States to address the United Nations and accept a speaking invitation to Columbia University he asked for permission to visit the site of the terrorist attacks in 2001, but was denied permission.
Then Ahmadinejad, who has proclaimed the Holocaust a hoax in the past, was asked by the television interview: "You were supposed to visit the site of the Twin Towers, but this aroused controversy and many objections in their media. What do you think of this?"
"I decided to visit there this year to pay my respect to the casualties and convey my sympathy to the families," Ahmadinejad said.
"I also wanted to raise several questions and express my views. I wanted to say that in my opinion, this incident is the result of the mismanagement of the world, and the result of the inhuman management of the world. Why did such an incident take place? We need to get to the root causes," he said.
Iran's president said, "We don't want them to turn this incident, in 20 years' time, into another false idol like the Holocaust, which they would use as a pretext to kill peoples, and to prevent anybody from opening this box and examining what really happened in this incident.
He continued, "They might turn 9/11 into something sacred, and whoever does not accept it would be considered an infidel, whereas whoever accepts it would have to accept all the ensuing crimes.
"In any event, we must express our views. I believe that this way, we would have formed cordial relations with the American people, and could have opened this issue up for discussion. Well, this is exactly what they want to prevent," he said.
He covered several other issues in his response, starting with a portrayal of himself as being victimized by the world's media.
"As you know, by spreading lies and by portraying me… For example, they show my picture next to a picture of bin Laden, or next to tanks and cannons firing and killing people. This is psychological warfare," he said.
As WND reported, Middle East terror leaders reported after Ahmadinejad visited Columbia that the event means Americans now are accepting Iran as a "great power" and are reconsidering their belief in the Holocaust.
"This invitation proves that when Muslims and Arabs come from a position of power to the West they receive more respect and consideration to their causes and to their conditions and to their insisting on their sovereignty," stated Abu Mosaab, an Islamic Jihad spokesperson and leader in the Gaza Strip.
"The fact that one of the American universities invited the Iranian president to raise whether the Holocaust happened proves that in the American people and leadership there is a hidden will to raise a serious discussion about these Zionists lies and propaganda," Abu Mosaab stated.
The terror leader told WND Ahmadinejad's address to Columbia "put on the American faces the question of what is your historical proof that this Holocaust happened?"
Adolf Hitler
"Doesn't the Zionist version of what happened deserve to be challenged and questioned and doubted?" exclaimed Abu Mosaab.
In his speech, Ahmadinejad encouraged further study of the Holocaust. He responded to one question by rejecting the contention he questioned the existence of the Holocaust, but responded, "What does it have to do with the Palestinian people?"
He went on to defend the rights of "scholars" to question its existence, noting, "There's nothing known as absolute."
In Washington, there was criticism of Columbia for arranging the recent appearance. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., said the invitation was wrong because Ahmadinejad "comes literally with blood on his hands."
WND also reported earlier an adviser to Ahmadinejad said Adolph Hitler was Jewish, was working for powerful Jews and wanted to create a new Jewish state.
Mohammad Ali Ramin said Hitler acted in cooperation with Britain, since the latter shared Hitler's desire to force the Jews out of Europe and into a new Jewish state.
Although Hitler's exact lineage is disputed – his father was illegitimate and there is some question about who his grandfather was – virtually no historians conclude the Nazi leader was Jewish.
Ironically, Ramin was recently appointed secretary-general of the new "world foundation for Holocaust Studies" established at the Iranian Holocaust Denial Conference in December. That conference was attended by notorious former Ku Klux Klan leader and later Louisiana state representative David Duke.
In that interview, Ramin said: "My suggestion was to establish an NGO, in Iran or elsewhere, that would reexamine this issue and investigate it with the help of international forums. But after making enquiries, we saw that nobody in the world had the courage to raise this issue and investigate it. Anyone who speaks or publishes anything about it is silenced immediately, before [the issue] can be examined. [That is why] we got the idea of organizing a non-governmental conference with the support of the Iranian government, but we [subsequently] discovered that nobody in the world would respond to it, and that it was totally ignored in the news.
Naturally, I do not want us to take a one-sided view of the Holocaust, and to deny it out of hand, since we do not have sufficient and complete information about it. The purpose of the conference was to question the order that the West has imposed upon us in this manner ...," he said.
As WND reported, at the Holocaust denial conference, Duke said: "I love my country and my people, but I know that the Zionist extremists lead my country to catastrophe in the Mideast and elsewhere around the world. I know that the Palestinian people, the Lebanese people, even the American people have been sacrificed on the altar of the Holocaust. It is the chronic media and government playing of the Holocaust that has blinded our eyes to new holocausts and new outrages.
MEMRI is a non-profit that monitors statements in the Middle East and translates them in order to bridge the language gap between the West and Middle East
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