Presidential candidate Bob Barr lived in both Iran and Iraq while growing up

That's interesting, never knew that. I found this out while listening to quite a long (35 minutes) interview on Bloggingheads.tv when he mentioned the fact. Here's a minute from the video:



And the text of that part of the video:

Well, what about Iran?

I've lived, I've actually lived in both Iraq and Iran when I was growing up. I have at least a passing familiarity with both countries and with that part of the world. The current leader of Iran, the current president Ahmadinejad, is not the real decision-maker in Iran, and treating him as such really is mistaken. We ought to be dealing directly with the religious and the parliamentary leaders in Iran; those are the ones making the decisions. We ought to be working also through surrogates, those countries that are allies of ours that maintain a strong and robust economic and political relationship with Iran to find ways that they can work with us, and we with them, to start once again get(ting) back to the strong commonality of interests that we and Iran have had over the years. There's no reason that that cannot provide the basis for a positive, continuing dialogue to reduce tensions in that country.

To see the whole video, click here.

Here's what Wikipedia says about Bob Barr:

His father, an army officer who graduated from West Point, moved the family to various locations around the world while pursing his career in civil engineering. The second of six children, Bob Jr. spent his boyhood in Malaysia, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and finally Tehran, Iran where he graduated from Community High School in 1966.

Here's a view of the high school in Tehran Bob Barr graduated from:

Campus 1970's - Steve Davenport '72

Pity it doesn't exist anymore. According to the page on Wikipedia:

Someone once called the Community School "a laboratory of democracy at work." Besides the Americans, there were many students from prominent Iranian families and children from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, whose families were living temporarily in Tehran. Their parents were diplomats, exiles, military, professionals, oil industry personnel, etc. CHS represented 28 nationalities and eight religions, yet everyone studied and played well together, barely aware of the differences between one another or of the tensions among many of their homelands. Christians, Jews, Moslems, Zoroastrians, and Sikh blended without a problem. Above the school entrance, in beautiful Persian calligraphy, were the words from the Book of John, 8:32, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Some students learned the United Nations pledge of allegiance to the individual countries and flags and sang the United Nations hymn, the "Song of Peace," set to music by the Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius.

The school facilities on the new campus were a big improvement, but there was a downside. It was located at the end of a dead-end street in a dangerous part of the city where unrest and riots were particularly common during the late 1970s. The class of 1979 was the last and final class to hold a graduation ceremony on the main campus in June of that year, after which its doors were closed forever.

Jean Sibelius, of course, is the founder of gives the name to the music school in Finland that produced these guys, the Finnish cello metal band called Apocalyptica that first came to prominence with their cello renditions of Metallica songs:




This video looks like the Allegory of the Cave, plus cellos.