for some reason they seem to dismiss mahmoud ahmadinejad. that's crazy.d never believe that. well, he does. he does. the reason i show you this, i think that there is a possibility that those on the left here in america are using people they think are just ridiculous. to create the instability to change the world. but they are playing with people who they don't understand at all. eric, do you agree with this or not? >> absolutely. look, glenn, at the end of the day, left and radical islam are strange bedfellows on the surface but they share a common goal. that is the overthrow and destruction of the western judeo christian. they will get in bed with the jihaddist who stone homosexuals because they are not western, or judeo christian. >> glenn: when we come back, i want to pick it up with this. people on the left say we can control the people later they work with us. i want you to address mindset of people like ahmadinejad and those who really believe in around osama bin laden, around mahmoud ahmadinejad, those in the muslim brotherhood who truly believe t

i have really serious problem with mahmoud ahmadinejad. i really, you know, publicly announced -- you know, he comes and gives this dog and pony show every year at the u.n. and a bunch of academics like me get invited to go and have dinner with him and sit around and talk. and last year i said, enough. i've been to three or four of these and the performance has been pretty bad and as much as i appreciate the good iranian food, i really was not -- i was not going to go back the next time. and needless to say, i haven't had an invitation since that time. and a lot of this had to do with the crackdown after 2009 and the election and the way he behaved and so forth. but that being said, the guy is fascinating in his own way. the kind of politics he's playing of getting ready of the subsidies in iran -- that was a really gutsy move. and nobody in the past -- anybody else who tried it got their hands burned very, very quickly. and thus far he has succeeded where everybody else failed. he tried to start his own foreign ministry. he got slapped do

i have really serious problem with mahmoud ahmadinejad. i really, you know, publicly announced -- you know, he comes and gives this dog and pony show every year at the u.n. and a bunch of academics like me get invited to go and have dinner with him and sit around and talk. and last year i said, enough. i've been to three or four of these and the performance has been pretty bad and as much as i appreciate the good iranian food, i really was not -- i was not going to go back the next time. and needless to say, i haven't had an invitation since that time. and a lot of this had to do with the crackdown after 2009 and the election and the way he behaved and so forth. but that being said, the guy is fascinating in his own way. the kind of politics he's playing of getting ready of the subsidies in iran -- that was a really gutsy move. and nobody in the past -- anybody else who tried it got their hands burned very, very quickly. and thus far he has succeeded where everybody else failed. he tried to start his own foreign ministry. he got slapped do

i have really serious problem with mahmoud ahmadinejad. i really, you know, publicly announced -- you know, he comes and gives this dog and pony show every year at the u.n. and a bunch of academics like me get invited to go and have dinner with him and sit around and talk. and last year i said, enough. i've been to three or four of these and the performance has been pretty bad and as much as i appreciate the good iranian food, i really was not -- i was not going to go back the next time. and needless to say, i haven't had an invitation since that time. and a lot of this had to do with the crackdown after 2009 and the election and the way he behaved and so forth. but that being said, the guy is fascinating in his own way. the kind of politics he's playing of getting ready of the subsidies in iran -- that was a really gutsy move. and nobody in the past -- anybody else who tried it got their hands burned very, very quickly. and thus far he has succeeded where everybody else failed. he tried to start his own foreign ministry. he got slapped do

you might recall the name because of the fall when the president mahmoud ahmadinejad travel to lebanon he gave a provocative speech just over the border from israel and he picked the spot because it is a town where almost everyone in the town is active or a supporter and it is a place that has been over and over destroyed and with much fanfare rebuilt by hezbollah and the supporters, so they call this town the capitol, the islamist resistance for israel this time represents the first reading and on the devotee of his will was the five guerrilla army. they threw everything they can add it in each war and by the time it is over the town gets rebuilt, repopulate it and there it is again, this islamic resistance hydra they cut the head off of and it springs back to fold. so we went down and salles an unbelievable amount of wreckage. something i've never seen in any war zone i've covered. the entire commercial district in reduced to rubble. the streets were discernible because their role was only a foot or so deep instead of 6 feet deep and you can sometimes see the fall and electricity pol

mahmoud ahmadinejad. we're going to see mahmoud ahmadinejad and his followers for years to come. he's almost created a cult of personality which is fascinating. and we are seeing that happening in the conservative camp right now in iran. but, of course, mahmoud ahmadinejad and his kind of protonationalistic populism in iran right now has its enemies. there's a great classic example of that. there's this hardcore, hard-liner islamist who says we shouldn't emphasize too much of nationalism and another character in the back is the current mayor of tehran who's very much of a pragmatic conservative and maybe he'll go with the current speaker of the house of the iranian parliament. i do not know. but what i do know is that whatever happens within this fractional conflicts within the conservative camp, they need to consider how they can influence the fascinating relationship between the supreme leader and the paramilitary intelligence apparatus. and the question is, if homi passes away and if he dies and if there's a very serious division over the issues i just talked about especially

i'm asking myself what is the ambition of mahmoud ahmadinejad? what does he want?ess is hard to achieve if you don't have it. you cannot do it falls or by decision. so i think you have to understand that is to such an extreme degree to an unexpected level, and that's important. and dangerous since we have nuclear bombs, because for nuclear bombs the majority [inaudible] it's not who can carry it from one place to another place. and that is a problem. >> a couple of things since we're almost out of time the baby can clarify. there's a report in the papers already that you asked president obama today to free convicted american spy, jonathan jay pollard, did you? >> yes. >> what's the argument? >> he's human, not judgment but consideration. the man is sick in prison for a long time. i, myself, am in charge of different people and have [inaudible] and have to check everything carefully. not on the level of the judges. with the court decides, i respect. but there were considerations, human suffering, the state of health, and that's what i asked. i didn't ask if they wou

faction to continue and in the field of the foreign policy, may be what's happening right now is mahmoud ahmadinejadhinking okay i'm talking about the holocaust never happened, didn't really deliver anything for me. the still don't love me the way they do the other after just once with israel and of more than me. maybe i should change my foreign policy. the school of iran is something that appeals to my population who had enough of this long after 32 years might also resume in the regions of that is what you are seeing their experimenting. you have to remember how his hands were tied. he's playing the situation where he takes one step too far, too quickly and get a letter from the supreme leader saying put your minister of intelligence backend, please because the leader doesn't need to have constitutional restraint. we can just decide the policy. so that's what i was trying to say. jordan, reaching out to jordan symbolically to say perhaps we want to break away from that sort of pull rejectionist cap or at least we don't want to limit ourselves to the hamas and hezbollah regime any more. we can see

you'd have a young, pro-western, highly-educated populace, but it's led by a messianic loan, mahmoud ahmadinejad. so why upset that apple cart? everything's working fine. when peaceful iranian students were out on the streets protesting an election that had been stolen in 2009, about 18 months ago, we didn't hear a peep out of obama. the students had good reason to think the election had been rigged and some pro-ahmadinejad districts. turnout was over 100%. wait, no, i'm sorry, i was thinking of al franken's election in minnesota. [laughter] but there was a lot of vote stealing in iran as well. but when it came to iran, liberals could not have cared less about peaceful protesters, not decapitating. when an iranian protester was shot dead in the street, obama responded forcefully by going out and is having an ice cream cone. then a year later liberals are hopping for democracy in egypt. they're all for the protesters decapitating mommy, shooting guns in the air. mubarak supported u.s. policy, used his military to fightists, recognized -- to fight terrorists, recognized israel's right to exist or,