Ahmadinejad the fabulist

Nobody denies the obvious like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has called the Holocaust, probably the most well-documented event of the 20th century, a "myth." He has continually denied Iranian involvement in Iraqi violence or in arming Hamas and Hizballah's rocket forces, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary on all fronts. He famously said at Columbia that in Iran there aren't homosexuals "like in [the United States]." One of his techniques in interviews with Western media is to simply deny allegations they make and dispute their sources.

He does this in his own country, too. He is under fire from both reformists and conservatives for his fiscal policies, yet he brushes aside problems like they were because of other peoples' actions all along. When asked about the doubling of Iranian currency in the open market over the last 3 years, widely blamed as a factor in the country's rising inflation, economist Morteza Allahdad said, "Ahmadinejad can't escape responsibility for this."

But why would that stop him from trying? In a TV address, he responded, "Inflation has its roots in the past," meaning that the blame should not be placed on his shoulders. What a far cry from Truman's "the buck stops here," no?