by Richard Stern

Ahmadinijan is visiting Chávez in Venezuela and will go on to Equador and Bolivia mortaring the alliance of those who resist the domination of those who won the hot war of 1939-45 and the cold war which ended 44 years later. There are agreements to buy each other's goods and products (cars, tankers) and to fuse their oil interests so as to squeeze the United States and other dominator countries which depend on it. The little Iranian is a wide-ranging visitor and an interestingly inclusive host. Anyone who furthers his drive to remap the world his way is welcomed with smiles and hugs. During the recent Teheran Holocaust Conference of such renowned historians as the Klu Kluxer, David Duke, he was photographed with Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, assistant director of Neturer Karta ("Guardian of the City"), an American group which believes as he does that the Holocaust has been exploited (or invented!) to underwrite Israel. (The Rabbi's group believes that a legitimate Israel will come into being only when the Messiah arrives.) Rabbi Weiss had indeed lost much of his family to whatever phenomenon Ahmedinijan substitutes for the Holocaust but this shared interest in the illegitimacy of Israel was enough to bring them together. (In October 2004, Rabbi Weiss arrived in France to bring flowers to the dying Yassir Arafat.) Meanwhile, Bush and Company were appearing on American networks in their non-accusing, all-understanding, steady-as-a-rock, Daddy-knows-best mode to stem the negative reaction to their "new Iraq strategy." Scott Pelley of "60 Minutes" was invited to Camp David and on the presidential helicopter, the president treating him to his special tour of the city about which he'd just read a book. He was photographed emerging from a meeting with the relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and to Pelley "seemed a different man," shaken as anyone not made of stone would be. His softness of heart was further underlined when he told Pelley that although someone showed him the film of Saddam Hussein's hanging, her did not watch nor want to watch him going through the trap door. Before the NFL playoff games, CNN showed a powerful documentary called "Combat Hospital." It showed a MASH unit in Iraq. No Robert Altman-M*A*S*H wisecracking here, only as much humanity as could be packed into an hour, young American military doctors and nurses immersed in the desperate, brilliant work of repairing or failing to repair the terrible wounds of those brought in