Iran's Ahmadinejad: Anti-Semite, Homophobe and 9/11 Truther

(Sept. 23) -- Taking on one of his favorite world stages today, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continued his tradition of serving up incendiary rhetoric while addressing world leaders at the United Nations.

As one has come to expect from the Iranian leader, Ahmadinejad used the occasion to challenge conventional wisdom and upset foreign dignitaries to the point that many of them stood up during his speech and walked out of the chamber.

9/11 Conspiracy
This year's fireworks occurred over Ahmadinejad's contention that most people in the world believed "that some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East, in order to save the Zionist regime."

Ahmadinejad also told the General Assembly that the U.N. should set up a fact-finding inquiry "so that in the future expressing views about it is not forbidden."

Homophobia
When Ahmadinejad visited New York to speak at the U.N. in 2007, he made a stop at Columbia University, where he denied reports that Iran executed citizens it believed to be homosexuals. As proof, Ahmadinejad declared that Iran did not have any homosexual residents.

Anti-Semitism

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Echoing his view that more study is necessary before we can truly know whether the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 terror attacks, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly argued that there is no evidence to suggest that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust and that further research is needed. In 2006, he hosted what he termed a scholarly conference in Iran, and invited noted Holocaust deniers like former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke to speak.

Much like his argument that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated to "save the Zionist regime," Ahmadinejad has often stated that the Holocaust, which he has termed a "myth," was used as the pretext for the formation of the Jewish state.

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