"Anyone who takes up arms to fight with the people, they are worthy of execution," Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami, a ranking cleric, said in a nationally broadcast sermon at Tehran University.
Khatami said those who disturbed the peace and destroyed public property were "at war with God" and should be "dealt with without mercy."
I think what the mad mullah means is that protesters deserve to be executed after a trial. The regime has been simply dispensing with formalities and shooting Iranians down on the streets for over a week now. That ship has sailed. We know the mullahs think protesters should die.
Our president, too, is frustrated by Ahmadinejad's demand for an apology over President Obama's fairly mild statements objecting to the Iranian crack down:
State TV in Iran quoted Ahmadinejad as saying on Thursday: "We expect nothing from the British government and other European governments, whose records and backgrounds are known to everybody and who have no dignity. But I wonder why Mr. Obama, who has come with the slogan of change, has fallen into this trap, the same route that Mr. Bush took and experienced its ending."
The Iranian leader has told Obama to "show your repentance."
Obama said he doesn't take such statements seriously.
"He might want to consider looking at the families of those beaten or shot or detained," Obama said. "That's where Mr. Ahmadinejad and others need to answer their questions."
First of all, it must be frustrating to the president that Ahmadinejad seems stubbornly resistant to hope and change. Second, since the president has basically issued a global apology to the world for everything we've ever done prior to January 2009, it is rather silly to him that he should have to apologize for such a specific event.
It is all rather redundant.
