On executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh: "The greatest American."
On Israel and the U.S.: "For me, the Jewish state of Palestine is a missing star in the American flag. You are the head of the snake for me. If I want to destroy the Jewish state of Palestine, I have to destroy you."
On whether he has any regrets: "There is no regret for justice."
Enter, on April 11, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran. In Mashad (meaning "place of martyrdom") - to Shiites, Iran's holiest place because it is the site of the 9th Century poisoning of Iman Reza - Ahmadinejad announced Iran has developed bomb-grade uranium. With now a cascade of 164 centrifuges for uranium enrichment, Iran intends to link 54,000 centrifuges - 3,000 by year's end.
A 1979 photograph almost certainly depicts Ahmadinejad as one of the Iranian "students" who held 52 Americans hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, ultimately for 444 days. He learned then America would do nothing in response to outrageous action. He knows now the U.S. and the West are unlikely to take out his nuclear program in its early stages. So call this Ahmadinejad's Hostage Crisis II as he prepares for Heaven knows what while holding America and the West hostage to precisely the moral equivalence that induces inaction.
And what does Ahmadinejad have in mind? He evidently regards himself as sent to Earth to salvage Islam - to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Shiites' version of the Messiah. Iran long has funded Hezbollah, the jihadist terror group in Lebanon now in possession of an estimated 14,000 missiles for firing at Israel; Iran has moved Revolutionary Guards into positions reinforcing Hezbollah along the Lebanese border with Israel.
Iran is in the business of something more than pistachios and Persian rugs. It also is funding the Hamas jihadists recently voted into power by the Palestinians. And for what it's worth, let this datum not be lost: biblical prophecy holds that Armageddon - which Osama, Ahmadinejad, Moussaoui and the 9/11hijackers, et al, seem so intently to want - will be fought in northern Israel's Valley of Megido.
XXX
From the Flight 93 cockpit recorder, Moussaoui, and Ahmadinejad we have testimony of the most chilling, compelling sort. Evil defined. And the case for our moral equivalence is a fatuous non-starter. Three years of diplomacy by the Bush administration - preceded by two decades of it - have brought us to this profoundly troubling moment. The question at hand: Pre-emption against Iran, or inaction - and an incinerated future for us all?