Iran’s Ahmadinejad To Visit Ground Zero?
He asked if he could, and there was some confusion earlier when an NYPD spokesman said he would be, but it looks like he’s being denied the opportunity to go there.
An advance team for the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asked earlier this month that he be allowed to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site during the opening of the United Nations General Assembly next week, but the request was denied, New York City police officials said today.
The request, which was made at a meeting that included the Secret Service and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was denied for reasons of security and safety, police officials said, adding that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s aides had asked that he be allowed into the pit, where construction is taking place.
Earlier today, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly had said that Iranian officials had made a “formal request” that Mr. Ahmadinejad be permitted to visit ground zero and that the department, in coordination with the Secret Service, was discussing the matter with officials of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations…
A short while later, around 4:15 p.m., the Police Department’s spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said that Mr. Kelly had misspoke and that police commanders had already decided that a visit to ground zero by Mr. Ahmadinejad was not feasible.
You’d think the Bush administration would have nipped this in the bud before it even got to the point where it was up to the NYPD to make the call. Doesn’t the State Department handle issuing visas to visiting dignitaries?
In the past Ahmadinejad and nasty terrorist-supporting dictators like him have been given license only to travel to the UN headquarters, their hotel and whatever airport they arrived at/departed from. That seems appropriate to me.
Because as an American, I don’t think a Jew-hating, terrorist-loving monster like Ahmadinejad (who has blamed 9/11 on both Jews and the Bush administration) should be allowed anywhere in this country with the exception of the UN. And I say that if the fools at the world body want him there let them set him up a cot or something.
