It is probable that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had never in his life been treated to as much boldness and honesty as he got from Columbia University President Lee Bollinger during his time in New York two weeks ago. Dr. Bollinger bravely lambasted his guest, who sat just feet away on stage, in remarks such as these:
    “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator. And so I ask you, why have women, members of the Bahá’í faith, homosexuals, and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?”
    “In a December 2005 state television broadcast you described the Holocaust as ‘a fabricated legend.’ One year later you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers. For the illiterate and ignorant this is dangerous propaganda. When you come to a place like this, this makes you quite simply ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”
    “The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history. Because of this and for many other reasons your absurd comments about the debate over the Holocaust both defy historical truth and make all of us who continue to fear humanity’s capacity for evil shudder at this closure of memory, which is always virtue’s first line of defense. Will you cease this outrage?”
    “Frankly and in all candor, Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions, but your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do.”
    In light of the fool Mr. Ahmadinejad was made into and made of himself, THE GEORGIA GUARDDAWG is delighted he was invited to Columbia University. No amount of propaganda and censorship will recover his reputation from the shame under which he buried it by refusing to answer “yes” or “no” to whether he believed Israel should be destroyed and stating, to howls of laughter and derision:
    “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have it.”
    He continued, “Women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedom,” and wondered “who truly was involved, who was really involved” in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Despite the smattering of applause he generated in whining about the Palestinians at irrelevant times the Iranian President left with no doubts that it is not just the American government but also academia opposes his ideology.
    We regret only that his stay in New York did not occasion an indictment for violating Article Three, Sections B. and C., of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. His past statements that warrant this charge include “As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map,” and “The countdown for the destruction of Israel has begun.” Mr. Ahmadinejad should be on trial for incitement to genocide and the misrule of his country, not in Tehran overseeing the development of an atomic weapons program.