Romney Blasts Iranian Leader
Tuesday, September 25, 2007; Page A04
INDICTING, NOT INVITING
Romney Blasts Iranian Leader
Forget about Fred Thompson's "Law & Order" history. It's Mitt Romney's campaign ads that are ripped from the headlines.
  Former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.), shown talking about health care in Detroit in June, gave details this week about his plan to fight HIV/AIDS if elected president. Edwards said he would set aside more money to fight the disease in other parts of the world and would create programs in the United States to treat blacks and Hispanics, who are more likely to have the disease than whites. (By Carlos Osorio -- Associated Press) TOOLBOXCOMMENT |
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CLOSEThe former Massachusetts governor yesterday continued his aggressive media strategy with a 60-second radio ad blasting the United Nations' decision to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak in New York.
"What we should be doing is indicting Ahmadinejad under the Genocide Convention," Romney (R) says in the spot running in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida.
In the ad, an announcer recounts a 2006 visit to Harvard University by former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. The ad says Romney refused to provide Khatami "VIP treatment."
"Governor Romney called the invitation a 'disgrace' and refused to grant Khatami a police escort," the announcer says. "Now another Iranian president is visiting America, coming to New York, and Governor Mitt Romney is leading the opposition."
While Romney took to the airwaves with his anti-Ahmadinejad message, other candidates stuck to condemning the Iranian leader's rhetoric from the campaign trail.
"The hateful lies that he may utter about Israel, the Holocaust -- the answer is for us to promote the truth and show the world the values and ideals that we hold dear," Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said in New York.
Former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) said that he found Ahmadinejad's statements on Israel "abhorrent." Speaking at a fundraiser in Chicago, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) criticized Columbia University for hosting the Iranian president, saying that the leader did not deserve a platform for Iran's "policies of hate and destruction." Fellow Republican candidates Rudy Giuliani and Thompson also criticized Columbia's decision to invite Ahmadinejad, with Giuliani calling the event "highly inappropriate."
