Ahmadinejad's letter

Here is a very rough and apparently quick translation of Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush. It's found in English at Le Monde (click on "document" on the sidebar for the .pdf or try this link).

It's a rambling letter. Ahmadinejad discusses technological development, 9-11, the Iraq War, Israel, global poverty, the commonality in Christian and Islamic morality, human rights, the nature of accountable government, and the takeover of the world by a shared monotheism.

There is too much here to post the whole thing, so I've simply linked. I started to excerpt the letter for this post, then gave up. Selection is, well, selective. I was also tempted to correct typos and grammar - it looks to me like a bad translation from the French. But.... So, I simply encourage you to read the entire letter.

UPDATE:

Juan Cole reminds (via Sadly, No!):

In any case, [Ahmadinejad's] letter to Bush holds no prospect of reducing tensions. It should be remembered that then Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh angered Washington in the early 1950s by nationalizing Iranian petroleum. Eisenhower slapped sanctions on Iran and destroyed its economy. Washington at that time thought Mosaddegh was a pinko, though in fact he was a relatively conservative aristocrat. At the height of the crisis, Mosaddegh wrote a letter to Eisenhower, which was ignored. Ike had the CIA overthrow the elected, parliamentary government of Iran and install the Shah as a megalomaniacal dictator. So the tradition of letter-writing by Iranian leaders at times of tensions with Washington isn't replete with successes. Of course, the Iranians took revenge for the heavy-handed US interference with their form of government. They made an Islamic Revolution in 1978-79, and more recently elected Ahmadinejad. What Washington wouldn't do to have that nice Mr. Mosaddegh back.

UPDATE 2:

Wampum has posted the entire text of the letter, and they've cleaned it up a bit (which I was too lazy to do): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

UPDATE 3:

Andrew Sullivan asks the right question about perhaps the most interesting part of Ahmadinejad's letter.

Ahmadinejad is appealing to Bush on the basis of their shared faith in the coming Apocalypse. It seems to me a perfectly good question for journalists to ask the president if he does indeed share Ahmadinejad's belief that God controls all human events, that the world will soon come to an end, and that there seems to be an acceleration of change that suggests this might be coming soon. That's what Bush's pre-millennialist base believes. It's what Ahmadinejad believes. Does the president?