Iranian Head Seeks Arms
But Holy SMOKES it's a Burning BUSH!

by Rena Silverman

President Bush today condemned his critics' calls for negotiations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as comparable to the "appeasement" of Adolf Hitler before World War Two

Bush, who spoke to the Israeli Knesset to ratchet up his rhetoric against Iran, saying Washington stood by Israel in opposing Tehran's "nuclear weapons ambitions." He warned that allowing Iran to obtain a atomic bomb would be "an unforgivable betrayal," that would be "Permitting the world's leading sponsor of terror to possess the world's deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations," Bush told the Israeli parliament.

The president is on his second visit to Israel in the last five months. This time, the President will travel to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Letting Iran acquire atomic arms, Bush said, "would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations."

Bush, who has refused any contact with Ahmadinejad, said the Iranian president "dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map."

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said, once again, lumping Iran's leader into an anti-Israel campaign cocktail, one of Bush's favourites. The ingredients: Ahmadinejad, Hamas, Hezbollah, Osama bin Laden and now, Nazi Germany.

"As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history," he added.

The Bush Administration also has a standing offer to talk to the Iranians about a wide range issues and to provide economic and other incentives if Tehran first agrees to suspend its uranium enrichment program. Tehran, however, claims that its nuclear program is merely aimed at the generation of electricity.

*Image: President George W. Bush stands with Dalia Itzik, Speaker of the Knesset, and Israeli President Shimon Peres on the floor of the Knesset Thursday, May 15, 2008, in Jerusalem. WHITEHOUSE.gov. Photo by Shealah Craighead.