Sympathy for the devils

Next week these guys will be councilmen ... or school board members.

Modern Macbeths don't seem to agonize much over the prospect of ascending to the throne bloodstained. But the issue of excluding murderers from government appears to be hotting up finally. First allegations surfaced that Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad participated in the kidnapping Americans in Tehran in 1979. Could be a case of mistaken identity, though it hardly matters--admitting to being part of the crowd that stormed the embassy isn't likely to cost him much politically. In today's atmosphere of hyperbolic anti-Americanism, he might even gain a few points in the worldwide polls for such an admission. This new allegation, however, is a bit nastier. According to an Associated Press report, Der Standard has found that "Austria's Interior Ministry and the public prosecutor's office are investigating alleged evidence pointing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's possible involvement" in a 1989 commando attack in Vienna that left Kurdish resistance leader Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou dead with a bullet in his brain. Three of his associates got the same treatment; two of them died.

Mahmoud "Headshot" Ahmadinejad in his International Man of Mystery days

The Austrians apparently think that Ahmadinejad may have coordinated the attack and provided the assassins with their weapons, and he may have done so in an official capacity as a sort of Iranian "spymaster."

It will be interesting to see the reaction from the loons on the European left who were jumping up and down to indict Bush for war crimes the minute he stepped onto French soil. Given that this crime actually occurred, and furthermore occurred inside the EU, shouldn't they be lining up outside The Hague asking that a warrant be issued for Ahmadinejad's arrest?

Sadly, this trend of inviting criminals into positions of legitimate power is on the upswing. Forty armed and masked members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades stormed a government building in Gaza earlier today to demand that they be included in the new Palestinian security forces. And then within hours we have a report that Abbas has reiterated his willingness to accommodate these thugs into his government.

Samir al-Mashrawi, a top Palestinian Authority negotiator, said he had contacted Hamas and other armed groups, by order of the government, to discuss the formation of a unity government ...

Those other armed groups include Islamic Jihad, who have responded that they will not join any government until Israel is completely destroyed. Why do the crazies appear more principled than our allies?