The White House's John Kirby continued parroting the Biden administration's inexplicable condolences to Iran following the death of its President Ibrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash over the weekend — but offered an even more confounding answer when asked whether the United States would be a part of the funeral.
In an on-the-record gaggle Monday, Kirby said "we certainly offer — as the U.S. government, offer our condolences," despite there being no need for the U.S. government to mourn the death of a president previously known as the "butcher of Tehran" for sending thousands of innocent Iranians to their deaths after minutes-long "trials" — not to mention the absurdity of sending sympathies for the man whose government made "death to America" its official position.
According to Kirby, speaking on behalf of the White House and Biden administration, insisted that "offering condolences is a typical practice" in the same breath he acknowledged that Raisi "was responsible for atrocious human rights in his own country" including "the arrest and the physical violence against hundreds of protestors, for instance."
"No question this was a man who had a lot of blood on his hands," Kirby added before arguing that "as we would in any other case, we certainly regret in general the loss of life, and offered official condolences as appropriate."
Kirby, again, is wrong with this attempt to justify the Biden administration's "official condolences" offered in a brief message issued by the State Department. Here's how Biden remembered Raisi:
The United States expresses its official condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and other members of their delegation in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran. As Iran selects a new president, we reaffirm our support for the Iranian people and their struggle for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
In contrast, here's what former President Bill Clinton said when another mass murderer, Pol Pot, died in 1998:
The death of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot has again brought to international attention one of the most tragic chapters of inhumanity in the twentieth century. Between 1975 and 1979, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge followers transformed Cambodia into the killing fields, causing the death of an estimated 2 million of their countrymen in a brutal attempt to transform Cambodian society.
Although the opportunity to hold Pol Pot accountable for his monstrous crimes appears to have passed, senior Khmer Rouge, who exercised leadership from 1975 to 1979, are still at large and share responsibility for the monstrous human rights abuses committed during this period. We must not permit the death of the most notorious of the Khmer Rouge leaders to deter us from the equally important task of bringing these others to justice. And equally, we must renew our determination to prevent such atrocities from occurring in the future.
Now is a time to remember the victims of Pol Pot's murderous reign of terror and to underscore our determination to help the Cambodian people achieve a lasting peace based on respect for basic human rights and democratic principles.
A bit of a difference, eh? Why wasn't what Kirby said about Raisi being a bloodthirsty dictator not included in the official government statement?
Kirby plunged ahead in Monday's gaggle by pledging that the Biden administration would "continue to stand with the Iranian people as they fight for their own civil rights and — as they should," without mentioning it was Raisi who denied civil rights to the Iranian people. "We’re going to continue to hold Iran accountable for all their destabilizing behavior in the region, which continues to this day," Kirby also insisted in a laughable re-framing of the Biden administration's policy toward Tehran.
As Townhall has previously reported, the Biden administration has let sanctions lapse on Iran's missile program and released billions of (quite fungible) dollars for the world's leading state sponsor of terror. That's not accountability, nor is the Biden administration's decision to reverse the Trump-era "Maximum Pressure" campaign on Iran that has allowed, by just one industry metric, the regime to make some $40 billion more on illicit oil sales since Biden took office.
If Kirby's desperate spin to make Biden appear tough on Iran while also mourning its dead butcher of a president wasn't bad enough, things got worse when he was asked whether the administration would be sending a delegation to Iran to attend Raisi's upcoming funeral.
"I don’t have anything on a delegation for a funeral to speak to today," was Kirby's response which should have been an easy "no."
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