Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Excerpts of Interviews On Hannity & Is Anybody Homes ( OLIVER NORTH: First of all, you’ve got to remember, the Iranians will repeatedly lie. I mean, they do it all the time. COLMES: Why would you say that? ):

DAVID ROEDER, FORMER HOSTAGE IN IRAN: Well, as David Jacobson said last night on your show, who knows who was behind the scenes with a gun to one of the other sailors or royal marines? Obviously, the young lady is scared, and that’s understandable. This is deja vu all over again, as Yogi said. I think leaving the folks with blindfolds, the nice little communal meal. What they don’t tell you is, after the cameras go off, all the food disappears.

And we don’t know whether they’re being interrogated and to what extent. I agree with what Ollie just said, but I think, unfortunately, that we have to take some of the responsibility for what’s happening now. Once we were released on President Reagan’s inauguration day, as he mentioned, from that point on, for almost 25 years, the U.S. government basically ignored Iran. They got away with what they did to us, and they’ve never paid a price, not a cent for it. The U.S. State Department and Justice Department defended Iran against the former hostages in U.S. federal courts. So it worked once; why not try it again?

HANNITY: Now, Colonel Roeder, I want to ask you specifically here. This is not the first time you have dealt with Ahmadinejad. You were one of the hostages. You were held against your will for a long period of time, but you believe Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, was one of your interrogators back then.

ROEDER: Not the interrogator, but present at several of my interrogations. I was one of the six that identified him when he was announced as the president of Iran. He appeared about the fourth interrogation that I had. And I know, 99.9 percent sure, that this is the same guy. And the reason for that, Sean, is that this man is what I call a blinker. He blinks his eyes more often than an average human being does. And everybody changes in 25, 26 years, but that’s something you can’t change. He’s the same guy.

DON SHARER, FORMER IRANIAN EMBASSY HOSTAGE: It makes sense the way the British are probably being treated. They’re going to be blindfolded, and hands tied, and they’re going to be intimidated and have guns stuck in their ear. They’re going to try to get them to confess to being spies. There’s no doubt in my mind that Ahmadinejad did know this was coming.

COLMES: Did you go through that? Were they trying to do that to you, get to you confess? What I understand, one of the things you experienced was being hung by your elbows?

SHARER: I had the rope tied around my elbows, and hoisted up on my toes, and just barely enough weight on my toes to keep me there, hung there for, it seemed like for about three weeks, but it was probably about 45 minutes.

And we had guns stuck in our ears and went through mock execution, lined up against the wall blindfolded, handcuffed. And people saying they’re going to execute us and start chambering rounds in their guns. And then they tell you to lay down. And at one point, I just said, “No, if you’re going to shoot me, you’re going to shoot me standing up.”

HANNITY: Colonel North, what can we learn from the example with President Reagan? President Reagan didn’t bother negotiating when they were dropping these land minds in the Persian Gulf in ‘87 and in ‘88. He didn’t bow at the altar of the U.N. He went in there, and he started sinking navy ships of Iranians, and it worked.

NORTH: And even more important, Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric leading up to the election in 1980 is what brought David home. I mean, the reality was the Iranians realized that inaugural day that Ronald Reagan was now president. Jimmy Carter no longer was. The problem is, this president has been severely weakened by what the Congress has been doing since they got elected in November. And the Iranians are doing this, again, for internal political purposes. David is absolutely right. Ahmadinejad was one of the people who planned the whole operation at the American embassy back in 1979. And so these guys look at this president as weak. And, unfortunately, our media and our Congress have made him appear so.

HANNITY: They’ve emboldened our enemies.