DebateGate

More accurately, it demonstrates the level of irrelevence and how uncredible the UN has become globally.  Much like what the NAACP has become nationally.  Not even a shell of what their original good intentions were.  Now just a mutation of once great organizations.

As i said...I don't even have to imagine the outrage leveled at Bush when he attempts or even indirectly demeans the leader of another foreign country.  Stuff along the lines of how thoroughly disrespectful and unpresidential, when not being labeled idiot

I can already visualize this article & headline if it were Clinton, or Gore, or Kerry as President, heading into the election cycle.  "Gas prices are plummeting."

Muslim violence
By Jeff Jacoby  |  September 20, 2006

AS SHE LAY dying in a Mogadishu hospital, Sister Leonella forgave her killers. She had lived in Africa for almost four decades and could speak fluent Somali, but her last words were murmured in Italian, her mother tongue. ``Perdono, perdono," she whispered. I forgive, I forgive.

She was 65 and had devoted her life to the care of sick mothers and children. She was on her way to meet three other nuns for lunch on Sunday when two gunmen shot her several times in the back. "Her slaying was not a random attack," the Associated Press reported. It "raised concerns" that she was the latest victim of "growing Islamic radicalism in the country."

Raised concerns? Sister Leonella was gunned down less than two days after a prominent Somali cleric had called on Muslims to kill Pope Benedict XVI for his remarks about Islam in a scholarly lecture last week.
``We urge you, Muslims, wherever you are to hunt down the pope for his barbaric statements," Sheik Abubukar Hassan Malin had exhorted worshippers during evening prayers at a Mogadishu mosque. ``Whoever offends our prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim. Sister Leonella was not the pope, but she was presumably close enough for purposes of the local jihadists.

If it weren't so sickening, it would be farcical:A line in the pope's speech suggests that Islam has a dark history of violence, and offended Muslims vent their displeasure by howling for his death, firebombing churches, and attacking innocent Christians. One of the points Benedict made in his speech at the University of Regensburg was that religious faith untethered by reason can lead to savagery. The mobs denouncing him could hardly have done a better job of proving him right.

In his lecture, Benedict quoted the late Byzantine emperor Manuel II, who had condemned Islam's militancy with these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

In the ensuing uproar, British Muslims demonstrated outside Westminster Cathedral with signs reading "Pope go to Hell" and "Islam will conquer Rome," while the head of the Society of Muslim Lawyers declared that the pope must be "subject to capital punishment." In Iraq, the radical Mujahideen's Army vowed to "smash the crosses in the house of the dog from Rome" and the Mujahideen Shura Council swore to ``continue our jihad and never stop until God avails us to chop your necks." Arsonists in the West Bank set churches on fire, and a group calling itself ``The Sword of Islam" issued a warning: ``If the pope does not appear on TV and apologize for his comments, we will blow up all of Gaza's churches."

In fact, the pope did apologize, more than once. Whether the studied frenzy will now subside remains to be seen. But it's only a matter of time until the next one erupts.

This time it was a 14th-century quote from a Byzantine ruler that set off -- or rather, was exploited by Islamist firebrands to ignite -- the international demonstrations, death threats, and violence. Earlier this year it was cartoons about Mohammed in a Danish newspaper.
Last year it was a Newsweek report, later debunked, that a Koran had been desecrated by a US interrogator in Guantanamo.
Before that it was Jerry Falwell's comment on "60 Minutes" that Mohammed was a "terrorist."
Back in 1989 it was the publication of Salman Rushdie's satirical novel, "The Satanic Verses."

In every case, the pretext for the Muslim rage was the claim that Islam had been insulted. Freedom of speech was irrelevant: While the rioters and those inciting them routinely insult Christianity, Judaism, and other religions, they demand that no one be allowed to denigrate Islam or its prophet. It is a staggering double standard, and too many in the West seem willing to go along with it. Witness the editorials in US newspapers this week scolding the pope for his speech. Recall the State Department's condemnation of the Danish cartoons last winter.

Of course nobody's faith should be gratuitously affronted. But the real insult to Islam is not a line from a papal speech or a cartoon about Mohammed. It is the violence, terror, and bloodshed that Islamist fanatics unleash in the name of their religion -- and the unwillingness of most of the world's Muslims to say or do anything to stop them.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/09/20/muslim_violence/

"A U.S. senator compared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler and made fun of his name on Tuesday during a congressional hearing on the U.S. strategy to end Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program," Reuters reports from Washington:

"Ahmadinejad--I call him Ahmad-in-a-head--I think he's a Hitler type of person," Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

"He has made it clear that he wants to destroy Israel. He has made it clear he doesn't believe in the Holocaust. He's a, he's a--we all know what he is," the senator added.

Hitler comparisons are almost always unenlightening, but this may be an exception, especially coming from someone so milquetoast that he once accused John Bolton of being insufficiently diplomatic. Ahmadinejad both has advocated and is seeking the means to bring about a Nazi-scale genocide of the Jews. If a Hitler comparison isn't apposite here, we don't know where it would be.

It's curious that Holocaust denial is considered Hitlerian, since Hitler himself believed in the Holocaust enough to make it his life's work. But of course Hitler engaged in a certain amount of misdirection. Here are some soothing passages from his May 21, 1935, speech to the Reichstag:

If present-day Germany stands for peace, it is neither because of weakness nor of cowardice. . . . The blood that has been spilt on the European continent in three hundred years stand in no proportion to the results obtained. . . . Every war means a drain of the best elements. . . . What could I wish but peace and quiet? If anyone says this is only the wish of leadership, I can reply, "the people themselves have never wished for war."

Compare with Ahmadinejad's interview yesterday with NBC's Brian Williams:

Williams: The president of the United States, speaking to the United Nations today, said to the people of Iran, "The United States respects you." But he said, "Your government is using resources to fund terrorists. And pursue nuclear weapons." He said he looks forward to the day when America and Iran can be good friends. And close partners in the cause of peace. How do you react to the statement of the American president today?

Ahmadinejad: We have the same desire, to be together for the cause of world peace. But we have to--see what the impediments are. Is it Iranian forces that have occupied countries neighboring the United States, or is it American forces that are occupying countries neighboring Iran? If Mr. Bush is saying that he can [unintelligible] the distance between the Iranian nation and the Iranian government, he is wrong. I am a normal person. A very average, regular person in Iran. The nation decided that I become the head of the state. The nation and the government are one and single. And together, we share everything. But we too like to rise at a point where we can pursue the cause of world peace.

Probably the strongest argument against the Hitler comparison is that Ahmadinejad, unlike Hitler, isn't an absolute dictator. By all accounts, the real power in Iran rests not with the formal head of state but with the "supreme leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Though we're not sure that makes us feel all that much better.


http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008969

if the  Geneva Conventions do apply then these are Prisoners of War and ought never be tried.  If they are international Criminals then it is the right and responsibility of the Congress to establish procedures for their trial and punishment.  I think that they are a lot like Pirates , stateless hijackers of commerce and kidnap artists , Pirates were tried on the spot by shipcaptains authorised to do so by the Congress.

Good deductions & analogy Plane