Fiddler your post was informative but clearly does not support any suggestion that the US elections are particularly good examples of democracy. I do not believe the US invited Iranian observers to count their ballots. As I have pointed out in previous posts “observers” from NATO countires have, in previous elections not only engaged in party politics but clearly lied for example saying the 96% in the Georgian election was in no way suspicious.

Whatever one might think of Ah’madinnerjacket his country has no record of participating in that sort of electoral fraud.

Not a fan of Obama at all. But what if the CIA is neck deep in this uprising? Due to Iran’s massive interference in Iraq it is very plausible there is/was a destabilization OP going on by us. Would obama’s behavior make more sense?
_______________________

wretchard –

any comments on Webster Tarpley’s views about Obama/Soros/Brezinski and the “color revolutions” i emailed you about a few months ago?

orange revolution
rose revolution
“the people power revolutions”
etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_revolutions

the Iranian one has been billed as the “Green” one…what a sad commentary on the confluence of language and thought.

”mohammad’s color’(and Hamas), ‘hope of springtime’,'green envrionmentalism’, or just ‘the next color in the hurricane naming-list’.

i felt

12. Gaffe Prices
‘Yeah, 0utrageous and heartbreaking, indeed.’

and…

17. A Conservative Teacher:
Who voted for Obama? He doesn’t have a clue on anything, is never ahead of the curve,
and is reacting to events, not shaping events. That’s not a good executive-
he is simply a bad congressman who somehow got elected.

and…

18. Limpet6
‘His tactics are simple. Give the press a story a day. Keep the issues domestic because we have the ability to control domestic spin.’

framed events well from my view.

Fact, Mr. Mousavi was expected to win, poles showed more and more Iranians were tired of Ahmadineajad finding him clownish and an economic train wreck. Only 34.2 percent of the population have a firm good feeling about Mr. Ahmadineajad according to the most reliable pre election polls, and the only pole to favor Ahmadineajad in the race was a government sponsored bit of data packing which placed Ahmadinajad ahead and by 16 points at that.

Here is the honest source. Even if the most unlikely scenario did occur Ahmadineajad’s “victory” would not have been anywhere close to the landslide announced two hours after the poles closed. That “victory” depended on over voting in the millions and discrepancies in at least 50 cities. The regime admitted to it. Khamenei said it wasn’t so only after his own people said it was. There is NO way to trust the “official” election results except to trust that they are fraudulent. So tell me again, what is the “honest” source to which you refer?

Yes, peaceful demonstrations were exactly what the opposition was about doing until the Bassiji riot began. Then the opposition became about self defense and defending Iran from bassiji thugs and criminals. You defend that flotsam of mob rule they call the Bassiji?

Having already determined what it is you do, I can only wonder what price you charge for your ahem, “services”?

Yes, Limpet6, as a practical matter I am dead wrong: nobody cedes their advantage unless convingingly compelled to do so. That is why I do my utmost to support 2nd Amendment rights.

The Iranian regime doesn’t have to do anything but exist to validate (in its and its apologists’ eyes) the recent “election”.

Two parties watch each other like hawks and have the muscle to cry “foul” very loudly.

In a one party system, or in a de facto dictatorship, the counters chorus, “Who cares?”

The onus on those counting the votes is to do so correctly and to convince the voters of this.

“So even western claims that it was expected to be close are proven unture. Dinnerjacket won fair & square. Democracy is not choosing the person the US favours, democracy is choosing who the people favour.”

Iran suddenly becomes a “democracy” because a politician some in the U.S. the do not favor “wins” one of its elections? A startling transformation, isn’t it? And it’s damn near the very definition of a democracy for unarmed folks (women, in particular) protesting the outcome of an election to be beaten, gunned down in cold blood, dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, etc.

Who determined the outcome of Iran’s presidential election? Who counted and validated the votes? Was such a thing done transparently, monitored by (reasonably) disinterested third parties? Was it done by folks with a history of honesty and fair play? Please, Neil, point me to a bona fide honest source who claims (and who can back up that claim with evidence of some sort beyond “He won fair and square”) that Dinnerjacket won, a source other than one associated with those involved in the ongoing repression and slaughter of those who think he did not. Please also point me to a description of the polling (conducted by whom, their methodology, etc.) that indicated that Dinnerjacket was ahead and predicted his “landslide victory” (and not the well-debunked recent bit in the Washington Post). I’m all ears.

Neil Craig @ 46:

“By that argument we both engaging in circular reasoning.”

No, you’re alone on that score. You are claiming that Dinnerjacket won “fair and square” because folks currently cracking heads and much worse (and with a documented history of cracking heads and much worse) claim he won and, additionally, on the basis of intelligence (intel is only flawed when it’s about WMD, right?) you imply the Obama administration (demonstrably not an “honest broker” given their being for some reason hell-bent on negotiations with Dinnerjacket) was privy to. Me, I’m merely acknowledging the reality that a non-negligible number of Iranians feel (to the point of risking their lives) that there was something wrong with the way the vote was tallied. Now perhaps those protesting have employed their conclusions as their premises (”our guy lost, so it had to be fraud”), but then they’d be comrades of yours. Or maybe those protesting have done some valid polling of their own, know the score and are out risking life and limb as a result. Hopefully the true story will emerge before too long.

Neil Craig @46:

“My guess Anodyne is that if I were to say the Libertarian Party won the last Presidential election you would insist I produce some evidence.”

A relatively transparent election in which there was no dispute (at least with regards to the Libertarian Party’s showing) is no analog for an extremely murky one in which there is. And to get even close (but no cigar by a long shot), the Libertarians would have had to dispute the elections and the Democrats in turn beat, kill and imprison them while telling them they just had to “accept” the outcome instead of engaging in a proper, transparent recount/validation.

>Now do you have evidence from an honest source that shows otherwise?

Translation: by default, the historically untrustworthy and brutal people who are killing folks are honest until proven otherwise.

What is your evidence that the vote was tallied correctly? What mechanisms have been employed to reassure the Iranians that their votes did indeed count. We’ll never agree. You give the mullahs the benefit of the doubt and I don’t.

You SERIOUSLY misapprehend the US electoral process to assert that the majority of people voted for Obama.

A plurality is sufficient.

In fact, it is possible with the Electoral College system for a candidate to narrowly lose the popular vote, yet still win election because of the distribution of Electoral votes.

In the 1992 3-way election, only 43 percent of the VOTES CAST were for candidate William Jefferson Clinton. The balance was split unevenly between Bush and H. Ross Perot, who ran as an Independent candidate.

So William Jefferson Clinton, of the untamable willie, was enjoying intern’s cooperation with his presidential staff while on the public payroll, having been chosen by substantially fewer than half of the voters who participated in the ‘92 elections.

When you consider that only a fraction of all citizens eligible to vote bother to register and exercise their franchise, you will see that a very small group can elect a U.S. President, even in the most scrupulously clean elections.

Please cease to lecture us about the absurdity of the Mullahs giving a CRAP about fair elections. They are a bunch of murdering tyrants who came to power as THUGS, breaking international law, shouting about the Shah’s SAVAK secret police, then turning on their own population, rounding up tens of thousands of dissidents and people who they regarded as a threat to their revolution.

Neil Craig, you might want to do a little research on the number of executions by the Iranian Islamic Republic of opponents and critics of the regime, and well, just people it regards as undesirable.

It won’t do much to reassure you that their chief concern is for the fine details of genteel behavior.

My guess Anodyne is that if I were to say the Libertarian Party won the last Presidential election you would insist I produce some evidence.

Now do you have evidence from an honest source that shows otherwise?

You’re implying that those who declared Dinnerjacket the winner did so honestly, when whether or not they did is the very crux of the issue (an issue that folks are spilling blood and dying over). Your smarmy prose hides circular reasoning that “honest” folks find wanting. There are plenty of good books on logic – here’s to hoping that you read one of them.