Ahmadinejad never "threatened to wipe Israel off the map"

Over in Peek, Evan highlighted an important post by Juan Cole -- a rebuttal of a drunken and libelous fit of dyspepsia by Christopher Hitchens.

Cole made two points that have to be amplified: 1) Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not have any power over the Iranian military establishment, and 2) he never threatened to wipe Israel off the map. I'll get to why these points are so important after the excerpt.