This speech is either brazenly hypocritical or astonishingly one sided. The criticisms levelled against Iran must apply equally to Israel backed by US military support. It is no doubt largely true that Israel is more democratic and tolerant, but do they permit UN atomic weapons inspectors? Whether or not Iran has assisted the Iraq insurgency may be proven one day. After all they are the country next door not the other side of the world. However there is no denying Israel has used disproportionate retaliation against minor attacks. They have now spent half a century bemoaning their treatment under the Holocaust while making life a misery for the Palestinians. When the US is no longer powerful Israel will wonder whether it has taken the right path.

Well I can assure you I won't be attending Columbia University.

Is this guy just having us on?

Iran certainly has many faults and political life there may be brutal. There are many grounds for critisicm. But the speech by Columbia University's president must go down as one of the most insulting ever delivered to the face of a head of state! Let's put his accusations in contrast to the approx. 1 million dead after the US invasion of Iraq and the fact that Iraq's children are now in greater distress than they were under the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.

I loved the line, "Do you plan on wiping us off the map, too?" Talk about paranoid hyperbole!

Read the article below for another view on what is happending between the US and Iran:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/09/24/ahmadinejad/index_np.html

The lesson here is...

who are our friends and allies...?

and

who are our ENEMIES..............?

Do we live on the basis of particular treaties... which guarantee our safey.....or do we not ?

If we do... (and we indeed DO).. then let us think twice before harping on about every 'speck' in our alliance partners 'eye' when we have enough PLANKS in our own.

Every person who has thus far (including me) offered a post here.. is doing so on the land 'we' (through our forefathers) took from a weak and technologically inferior people group. Those who have migrated.. are also benefiting from this and thus share any guilt based on those events.

THAT IS CALLED A PLANK.. or a beam.. and its in OUR eye.....

While it might give critics of the USA a sense of high moral ground to point out those specks.... and speak about how many people have died in Iraq WITHOUT pointing out that most of them have been killed by their own sectarian squabbles.... it does not change the level of moral hypocrisy which...like the BOOMERANG comes back and whacks us fair and square in the face.

Jesus once said "Without me you can do nothing"... and this applies to our alliance with the USA.. without them... we ARE nothing.

If you cannot bring yourselves to commend them.. at LEAST have the honesty to make balanced complete statements.

Odd sentiments.

I for one, thought Bollinger's speech was fantastic. I grant you, it was a little insulting and I'd have preferred a structured debate, but even so - Mahmoudinejad deserves it.

I guess I have some reservations that this will hamper academic speeches in future... but even so... it was a great speech.

A classic example of an American's inability to view official actions of their own administrations, State and Federal in a global context.
I oppose the death penalty but in comparison, how many executions have there been in the United States ? according to stats on the Death Penalty Information Centre, there have been 40 so far this year.

Arrests of American citizen academics in Iran are no more outrageous than American kidnappings of Iranian diplomats in Iraq to establish their embassy.

As for the toll in Iraq, over a million since the US led invasion which is a damn sight more than Saddam Hussein managed and I include those killed by IED's because the US presence is the cause.

With Israel having Nuclear Weapons not subject to international scrutiny on Iran's doorstep, who can point the finger and assert that Iran should not seek to maintain a retaliatory capacity or should they be relegated to the status of Palestinians and have to resort to throwing stones and home made rockets.

Whereas this academics greeting to the Iranian president may have made him feel self gratification, I don't think he has struck a blow for reconciliation and on balance a very spiteful, one sided slap in the face to the visitor.