Thug in Charge
Picture 1 – 1979:
Picture 2 – 2005:
The guy on the right in 1979 sure looks like the guy on the left in 2005. According to several hostages, he was one of the bad ones:
A Pinehurst man who was held hostage in Iran says the president-elect of that fundamentalist Islamic country headed a team of interrogators who threatened to kidnap his handicapped son and send the boy’s severed toes and fingers to his wife.A quarter century after he and 51 other American hostages were taken captive, retired Air Force Col. David Roeder said Friday that he recognized President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 49, from television footage as the man “clearly in charge” of his inquisitors. ...
Roeder also was riveted by memories of the interrogation where his son, Jim, who has a form of cerebral palsy, was threatened.
Ahmadinejad “was not the interrogator or the interpreter, but he was there, and he was clearly in charge,” Roeder said.
The threat to his family was detailed, he said. His captors knew the address of the home in Alexandria, Va., where his wife and two children were living. They also knew the number of the bus his son rode to special education class and the location of the school.
“When they know so much about your family, that’s scary,” he said. “They were getting their information from somewhere, and there were Iranian students all over the U.S.”
The only good news here is that it will be even harder for the Europeans to back this guy. It will also make it easier to destabilize Iran from the inside.
About many things Americans have incredibly short memories. The Iranians Hostage Crisis is not one of them.