> Reading Slackman's articles, I conclude that Ahmadinejad won because
> he was the best candidate among the eight who were allowed to run.
In the 1979 photograph, Ahmadinejad, then 22 or 23, looks not like a theocratic bully but like a delicate Ernest Guevara in his Motorcycle Diary days. I'd have to say I'm enchanted by the photograph. :->
http://www.denverpost.com/frontpage/ci_2834236
In the turbulent early days of Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ahmadinejad was more concerned with putting down leftists and communists at universities than striking at Americans, they said. Instead, they said, during the long standoff he was writing and speaking against leftist students.
I knew a good dozen or so Iranian-American student leftists back in the late 70's. Met some earlier in Denver, protesting a visit by the Shah's sister. CSUN had alot of Iranian students esp. in Engineering. All dead now, I presume, if they went back, murdered by the mullahs. If they had stayed in the USA, instead of arguing the finer points of a, "national democratic, " revolution in M-L fashion, like I saw them do at a big NAM meeting in L.A. after Chicago 7/8 attorney Leonard Weinglass went to Tehran w/ Ramsey Clark in an attempt to negotiate release of the hostages.
Material on and by the Iranian Left, that YF shows an elementary lack opf solidarity with. http://www.workersliberty.org/taxonomy/page/or/96?from=20 -- Michael Pugliese