The Daily Background

The other day I noted the following tit for tat exchange between Congress and the Iranian Parliament:

Iran’s parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army “terrorist organizations,” in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II; using depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq; supporting the killings of Palestinians by Israel; bombing and killing Iraqi civilians; and torturing terror suspects in prisons.

Well, here’s another tit for tat:

After the controversial appearance of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University last week, an Iranian university yesterday invited President Bush to travel to Iran and speak on campus about a range of issues, including the Holocaust, terrorism, human rights and U.S. foreign policy, the Fars News Agency reported yesterday.

The invitation from Ferdowsi University in the northeastern city of Mashhad asked Bush to answer questions from students and professors “just the same way” that Ahmadinejad took questions “despite all the insults directed at him.”

Naturally, the White House says Bush would only consider visiting Iran if it had a truly democratic government. Imagine if Ahmadinejad had imposed a likewise requirement on the US before accepting Columbia’s invitation (”I’ll only visit if the US becomes an Islamic Republic first”)…

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog