Turning up the pressure on Iran.

This is all about pressure. I have found this claim highly dubious, and the early examinations of videos of the hostage taker this guy is supposed to be yielded a pretty fair consensus that "no it's not him." I don't know the bios of all six of the hostages, and I don't want to minimize their experience, but I do remember that two of the original three sources for this story had intelligence ties or background. The guy who went on hardball was ONI for god's sakes.

I dunno, I dunno, but I am greeting this story with some serious skepticism. I mean if the Bush propaganda arm could turn John Kerry into a coward and deserter, and John McCain into the same(and that one still burns me up,) how hard is it gonna be to turn an Iranian into a terror threat.

The linkage goes like this. Ahmadinejad was a hostage taker. Ahmadinejad was the ringleader. Ahmadinejad is therefore a terrorist leader. Ahmadinejad is responsible for the next terror attack. We must attack Iran to stop the great danger of Ahmadinejad.

Wouldn't it have just been easier to catch Bin Laden, if they'd really wanted to, back when they had him trapped.

Watch for the sources of the quotes on this. I would expect Hadley to be out front with some other "top ranking officials," Cheney being foremost to gin this up. On the plus side, I'll bet that "top ranking official" rove and Libby are pretty quite about this.

From AP

The State Department on Friday called on Iran to respond clearly to allegations that its incoming president was a leader of the student movement that orchestrated the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

"It is the responsibility of the Iranian government to respond to these charges frankly and clearly," said spokesman Sean McCormack.

The White House said Thursday that Iran's incoming president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was a leader of the student movement during a fundamentalist revolution that overthrew the pro-U.S. Shah and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

Six former hostages have identified the president-elect as one of their captors.

McCormack said those former hostages "have talked very specifically about what they remember as his participation in interrogations."

"I don't think that we have heard definitively from them on that score," he said of Iran's leaders.

An ongoing U.S. investigation has not produced "anything that would contradict what these former hostages have said," McCormack said.

Other ex-hostages have said they have no basis for making such accusations.

McCormack declined to say whether the investigation had corroborated the allegations involving Iran's incoming president.

"I would say that we remain very concerned over charges regarding President-elect Ahmadinejad," the spokesman said. "The taking of the American embassy is something many Americans remember with both outrage and disgust."