Strong statement from Romney!
The Press Release is here.
“State taxpayers should not be providing special treatment to an individual who supports violent jihad and the destruction of Israel,” said Romney.
Romney’s action means that Khatami will be denied an official police escort and other VIP treatment when he is in town. The federal government provides security through the U.S. State Department.
Romney criticized Harvard for honoring Khatami by inviting him to speak, calling it “a disgrace to the memory of all Americans who have lost their lives at the hands of extremists, especially on the eve of the five-year anniversary of 9/11.”
“The U.S. State Department listed Khatami’s Iran as the number one state sponsor of terrorism. Within his own country, Khatami oversaw the torture and murder of dissidents who spoke out for freedom and democracy. For him to lecture Americans about tolerance and violence is propaganda, pure and simple.”
After a long list of Khatami's abuses and support of terrorists Romney concluded:
“Khatami pretends to be a moderate, but he is not. My hope is that the United States will find and work with real voices of moderation inside Iran. But we will never make progress in the region if we deal with wolves in sheep’s clothing,”
Addendum:
Bravo to Gov. Romney. It takes a certain moral clarity (if not certainty) to be President of the United States. At times bold statements like this are necessary to remind everyone that all things are NOT equal. Believe it or not, this is depressingly easy for people to forget.
I've read a few pieces over the last few days about this guy on our soil lecturing us on how we're creating terrorists. Despite his label as a moderate, this is a man who has been out of power in Iran for less than a year. As dispicable as Ahmadinejad is, he was not the one who armed Hezbollah with those 4,000 rockets they used against Israel in the recent war. Indeed, the only difference I can see between the policies of Ahmadinejad and Khatami is that Ahmadinejad has been kind enough to shout his intentions from the mountaintop.
This reminds me of the time Rudy Giuliani kicked Arafat out of the Lincoln Center (too socially liberal to be president, but man was that sweet). Look for history to repeat itself and for many to recoil in horror of Gov. Romney not showing Khatami the respect he never earned.
Correctly placed at the top of the list of griviences is this:
During the period of time he was in office, from 1997 to 2005, Khatami presided over Iran’s secret nuclear program. Currently, the Iranian Government under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is snubbing the international community’s request to cease nuclear weapons production.
With all due respect to President Bush's speech today, a nuclear Iran, not Bin Laden, is the greatest threat we're facing today (and it disturbs me how non-serious the whole situation is being taken). Khatami deserves a great deal of the blame for this massively destabilizing program.
~~~Thomas