Ahmadinejad Defends 9/11 Remarks

ALJAZEERA: Iran president challenges UN to set up fact-finding mission to investigate whether attacks on the US were a conspiracy.

Western diplomats left the hall when Ahmadinejad on Thursday said many believe 9/11 was a conspiracy [Reuters]

Iran's president has defended remarks he made on 9/11 attacks during his speech at the UN General Assembly.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday that the background to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the US in 2001 was "suspicious".

A day earlier US and several Western diplomats walked out of the UN summit as Ahmadinejad said many believed "some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack".

Speaking to journalists in New York on Friday, he challenged the UN to set up a fact-finding mission to investigate the attacks in which almost 3,000 people died.

"I did not pass judgement, but don't you feel that the time has come to have a fact finding committee," Ahmadinejad said.

US Responds in Full Attack Mode:

The White House described the remarks as the latest in a long list of outrageous comments that would deepen Tehran's isolation from the international community.

Barack Obama, the US president, on Friday described the Iranian president's remarks as "offensive and 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, for him to make a statement like that was inexcusable," he said in an interview with the BBC Persian news service.

The US and its Western allies are locked in a standoff with Iran over its nuclear programme, which Washington believes aims to produce atomic weapons but which Tehran says is for solely peaceful purposes.

In a speech at the UN on Thursday, Obama reiterated the US position that the door to diplomacy with Iran remained open but that Tehran must fulfil international obligations over its nuclear programme.

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from the UN headquarters, said Ahmadinejad's remarks had stirred anger in the US.

"This has really touched a raw nerve here. Many people you speak to are very, very angry about the comments," he said.

However, our correspondent said that after lashing out at Ahmadinejad's remarks, Obama had renewed his offer for talks with Iran.

"I think the Americans are trying to put this spat behind them and move on because they really do feel that there is the possibility of fresh talks with Iran. They know this is an important opportunity.

For his part, Ahmadinejad told a news conference on Friday that he was ready for talks with the international community. He said an Iranian official might meet next month with world powers to prove that Tehran's nuclear programme is purely peaceful.

The UN Security Council in June imposed a fourth set of sanctions against Iran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium and to prove Iran is not trying to build an atomic bomb. The European Union and the US have added even more extensive sanctions targeting its foreign trade.

Asked what other actions could be taken if sanctions do not work, Obama said on Friday: "There are a whole host of options. And these options would be exercised in consultation with the international community."

Without specifying what additional options he had in mind, Obama said a diplomatic solution remained possible. "But it is going to require a change in mindset inside the ... Iranian government."

Al Jazeera Links to 9/11 Truth Web Site

It's about time.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad's comments at the UN raised the issue of US government involvement in the attacks. An Al Jazeera article covering these remarks included a section with the title 'Alternative Perspectives." The segment included the following:

The most popular website on so-called alternative views on the September 11, 2001, attacks seems to be 911truth.org. The site acts as a clearing house for an array of various views and refuses to articulate an exact position on who it believes launched the attacks and why. Rather, it poses a series of questions, while offering readers the "Top 40 Reasons to Doubt the Official Story".

A "documentary" called Loose Change questioning the official 9/11 narrative, has been popular among activist groups and other more traditional doubters.

"That 19 hijackers are going to completely bypass security and crash four commercial airliners in a span of two hours, with no interruption from the military forces, in the most guarded airspace in the United States and the world? That to me is a conspiracy theory," Korey Rowe, the film's director, told Time magazine.

Mainstream media in the West, and even the US government itself, have felt a need to respond to these theories. The US state department's Bureau of International Information Programs has a website devoted to debunking the "top September 11 conspiracy theories".

In a piece titled "Why the 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Won't Go Away", Time argues that what many would call conspiracy theories are "not a fringe phenomenon".

'Planned demolition'

Some of the more unconventional claims include that the twin towers did not collapse from the impact of two Boeing 767s and the petrol stored in their tanks. Rather, the buildings collapsed in a planned, controlled demolition - perhaps through explosions in the basement.

Another popular theory is that a missile fired by elements from within the US government hit the Pentagon, rather than an aircraft. Some of the "alternative" or "conspiratorial" views come from people who seem like serious scholars."

Ahmadinejad - Lost in Translation

There's another other side to the story about the US Delegation making a big show of walking out during his remarks about 9/11.



Iran's president takes center stage at the United Nations but due to a "technical error" Ahmadinejad's remarks about 9/11 failed to be heard.



United Nations, New York, Sept 24, 2010

The following is an excerpt from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's (written) speech delivered to the 65th annual meeting of United Nations General Assembly (full text here):

. . . "It was said that some three thousands people were killed on the 11 September for which we are all very saddened. Yet, up until now, in Afghanistan and Iraq hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, millions wounded and displaced and the conflict is still going on and expanding.

In identifying those responsible for the attack, there were three viewpoints.

1- That a very powerful and complex terrorist group, able to successfully cross all layers of the American intelligence and security, carried out the attack. This is the main viewpoint advocated by American statesmen.

2- That some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.

The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.

3- It was carried out by a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation. Apparently, this viewpoint has fewer proponents.

The main evidence linking the incident was a few passports found in the huge volume of rubble and a video of an individual whose place of domicile was unknown but it was announced that he had been involved in oil deals with some American officials. It was also covered up and said that due to the explosion and fire no trace of the suicide attackers was found.

There remain, however, a few questions to be answered:

1- Would it not have been sensible that first a thorough investigation should have been conducted by independent groups to conclusively identify the elements involved in the attack and then map out a rational plan to take measures against them?

2- Assuming the viewpoint of the American government, is it rational to launch a classic war through widespread deployment of troops that led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people to counter a terrorist group?

3- Was it not possible to act the way Iran countered the Riggi terrorist group who killed and wounded 400 innocent people in Iran. In the Iranian operation no innocent person was hurt.

It is proposed that the United Nations set up an independent fact-finding group for the event of the 11th September so that in the future expressing views about it is not forbidden. *

I wish to announce here that next year the Islamic Republic of Iran will host a conference to study terrorism and the means to confront it. I invite officials, scholars, thinkers, researchers and research institutes of all countries to attend this conference. . ."

Read the FULL transcript here.

ED NOTE: We have read on the internet that there is some dispute about the accuracy of the translation of Ahmadinegad's remarks into English. We will post more when this is sorted out.

* We think that this one line is the most important part of this speech and the one thing that won't be covered seriously by any mainstream news media. Instead, it is Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denying-anti-Semitic nonsense that they wish us to focus on so that we will ignore the truth when he does speak it out loud.

Dang. When the "wrong person" speaks the Truth - we ignore it at our peril.

This is how (the liberal) Rachel Maddow handled it on her news show. She seldom misses an opportunity to bash the 9/11 Truth Movement and we think she ought to have known better and think less of her for remarks like these:

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