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Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rutten1-2008oct01,0,7697646.column
Ahmadinejad's Evil Words Aren't Just Talk
[Los Angeles Times] Tim Rutten - Time and again, the spokesmen for Islamist radical movements have told the world precisely what they intend. Time and again, the scant handful of Americans who bothered to take notice have dismissed what was said as the product of political alienation, as the consequence of economic marginalization, as a hangover of post-colonial insecurity or as tactical bluster. Mary Halbeck, one of the West's foremost scholars of jihadism and its religious origins, describes Islamist extremists as "committed to the destruction of the entire secular world because they believe this is a necessary first step to create an Islamic utopia on Earth." This is what the men who brought the hell of 9/11 to America believed. When the delegates to the UN General Assembly applauded Ahmadinejad's speech last week, and the American media passed over it in silence, this is the sentiment to which they gave their respective explicit and tacit approval.