"Up pops the devil, right in front of me"

More on mad mullahs and Iran demonization:

I've been a little obsessed about this (see here and here), but there are interesting pieces by Gary Leupp and BagNewsNotes on the "Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage-takers" story that came up last week, and just as suddenly disappeared. The accusation was of course page one news, but you have to look a little harder to find out that he wasn't the guy. In "Anatomy of a Neocon Smear" William O. Beeman rounds up the usual suspects and says Ahmadinejad "might be a bridge-builder to the world—if the world would meet him halfway"—which is probably the worst possible news for the neocons imaginable.

So, on to Plan B for the innuendo squad, and the suddenly hot accusation, after 15 or 16 years (!), that Ahmadinejad participated in, or was complicit, in a murder. Austria's justice minister denies he's probing Ahmadinejad for the murder of a Kurdish official in 1989. Who knows? I have no idea whether the accusation is true or not, but it's an interesting time for it to come up, no?

Meanwhile, Iran and Iraq make a deal on military cooperation.