Referring to his turnaround, he said, "The problem that people have attributed to me is one of hubris, arrogance, unwillingness to shift, listen, and respond.
"As you can see, I simply did not make some of the statements that had been attributed to me, and the others were greatly distorted, tending to create a caricature of me.
Rather, straw-man arguments have been used in which statements have been attributed to me that I never made.
Speaking with the CBC about the letter, Mehta denied that these were the reasons that he was fired and said he has "never done any of the acts that have been attributed to me".
While I have been in Egypt over the last fortnight, exploring these issues with Muslims and non-Muslims in a pivotal society of the Middle East, a debate has been bubbling away on the web (see www.signandsight.com) in which various woolly and nefarious views on the subject have been attributed to me.
NOVEMBER 1999: A month after a general election in which the Freedom Party surged into second place, Mr. Haider apologized for his past comments: "In the past, some remarks have been attributed to me in connection with Nazism which were certainly insensitive or open to misunderstanding.
Mr Mitchell says he wants to "draw a line" under the incident, telling reporters: "I did not use the words that have been attributed to me".
