The media apparently is being cowed again just as it was in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, just as it is under Arafat’s gangsta Palestinian Authority and the news suffers and people wonder how their impressions are so skewed. First we have DISASTER DISASTER DISASTER QUAGMIRE QUAGMIRE QUAGMIRE STALINGRAD STALINGRAD STALINGRAD REFUGEES REFUGEES REFUGEES CIVIL WAR CIVIL WAR CIVIL WAR LOOTING OF ARTIFACTS LOOTING OF ARTIFACTS LOOTING OF ARTIFACTS on the one hand but when Iran has a total sham election, we get Hardliners gain in Iranian elections like this is a normal election!!! See more below… from the very conservative National Review.
nationalreview.com/ledeen/le … 231057.asp
Even for a regime that excels in deception, the announcement by the Iranian government that nearly half the eligible voters cast their ballots in Friday’s election is an extraordinary bit of effrontery. And even those Western “news” outlets that decided to pronounce the turnout “low” (the BBC, of course, echoed the party line by talking about a large turnout), did so by comparing the official numbers with those of the last parliamentary election, when more than 60 percent voted for the toothless “reformers.”
The real numbers are a tiny fragment of the official ones. The overall turnout came in at about twelve percent, with Tehran a bit lower, and places like Isfahan and Qom (of all places, the headquarters of the Shiite religious elite) closer to five percent. The only major city with a substantially higher turnout was Kerman, due to a local factor: A widely hated hardliner was running, and many people judged it more important to demonstrate their contempt for him personally by voting for others than to show their rejection of the regime en bloc by abstaining.
It shouldn’t have been hard to get this story right, at least in its broad outlines. A leading member of the old parliament, Mehdi Karoubi, was asked why he did badly, and he replied, publicly: “because the people boycotted the election.”
Keep in mind that the reporters knew full well that all but a handful of polling sites in Tehran
In today’s leftist Washington Post…
TEHRAN, Feb. 23 – International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have discovered that Iran produced and experimented with polonium, an element useful in initiating the chain reaction that produces a nuclear explosion, according to two people familiar with a report the inspectors will submit to the United Nations this week.
Iran reportedly acknowledged the experiments but offered an explanation involving another of polonium’s possible uses, which include power generation. The IAEA noted the explanation and left the issue “hanging there,” said one person familiar with the matter. The experiments were described by this person as occurring “some time ago.”
The discovery is the latest example of a nuclear activity that Iran had not previously disclosed. Earlier, it was revealed that Iran had obtained plans and parts for a nuclear centrifuge, a sophisticated machine used to enrich uranium for use in power plants, as well as in nuclear weapons. Iran insists it always intended its nuclear program to be used only to supply electrical power.
In other news, Iran is making more disclosures regarding its nuclear program. Do you believe that its cooperation is due to
a. European efforts to negotiate a settlement
b. the presence of 100K plus US troops in Iraq and more in Afghanistan?
The disclosures come as Iran is undergoing fresh inspections by the IAEA, the U.N. body charged with enforcing the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran was facing a deadline for disclosing its nuclear activities late last year when three European countries persuaded its government to accede to international pressure to open its nuclear program. Iran agreed to permit more rigorous inspections, suspend uranium enrichment and make a full accounting of nuclear programs it had kept largely secret for 18 years.
Hint for those that chose a., why oh why didn’t these negotiations and treaties work for 18 years?
is it just me or are there quite a few fred smiths in this forum. 
opinionjournal.com/editorial … =110004728
I disagree completely with their conclusions.
Mapodurian:
Why exactly? I must admit that I would be very much in line with the editorials recommendations and thinking.
I think Christiane Amanpotpourri hit the nail on the head when she talks about Iran being freer now than before; I mean, at least those few women who did turn up to vote could see what they were doing because their headscarves weren’t covering up their faces. And look how considerate those parliamentarians are heloing that old cleric to the toilet in full view of the TV cameras. What’s so bad about that? At least the oil company charges very little for gasoline unlike Halliburton for example.
Broon Ale:
You must be attempting to bait me. Freer now because women’s veils can be worn a bit farther back on their heads. Yikes! Is this CNN’s top reporter in the region? and she is talking about women’s veils? What if we had someone in Poland during the Solidarity movement, who noted that the elections must be freer because there was more ketchup with the potatoes? More vinegar in the sauer kraut? Give me a f*** break. Iran is a dictatorship. The socalled reformers are part of the same gang fighting not over disbanding the gang but their share of the spoils. Glad to see however that so many that were so concerned about the US invasion of Iraq are protesting in the streets of London, Paris, NY or are flying to Teheran to serve as human shields for the protest movement. Oh, they aren’t? Must mean then that there is a real danger this time not a faux one to go with their faux outrage but the frisson of political protest! Maybe we can meet some cool people there and party?! Should be a hoot. Get your pipe and sandles and meet me there.
Fred Smith:
bebakhshid…I was yanking your chain a little 
From today’s conservative Washington Times (excerpts)…
washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20 … -7304r.htm
On March 8, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors will discuss Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The meeting will be an important test of the Bush administration’s willingness to challenge efforts by Europe and the IAEA bureaucracy to delay what should be inevitable: referring the issue to the U.N. Security Council.
Since June, when the IAEA reported that Iran has been secretly working to develop nuclear weapons, Washington has worked to intensify the pressure on Tehran to come clean. In September, the IAEA announced it had set an Oct. 31 deadline for Iran to disprove the mounting body of evidence that it was developing nuclear weapons. Right before the deadline, Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment in exchange for European promises to provide peaceful nuclear technology. Then, on Nov. 10, IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei issued a 30-page report documenting Iran’s deceptions about its nuclear program dating back to the 1980s. But Mr. ElBaradei’s report concluded that “no evidence” of an Iranian nuclear weapons program had been found.
Two days later, the State Department’s undersecretary for arms control, John Bolton, said that this conclusion “is simply impossible to believe … In what can only be an attempt to build a capacity to develop nuclear materials for nuclear weapons, Iran has enriched uranium with both centrifuges and lasers, and produced and reprocessed plutonium.” The United States, he added, “believes that the massive and covert Iranian capabilities make sense only as part of a nuclear weapons program.” In early December, Mr. Bolton said that Iran has “deliberately and repeatedly lied to the IAEA” about its nuclear weapons programs.
Since then, evidence of Iranian cheating has mounted. Last fall, Iran reached an agreement with Britain, France and Germany to suspend its uranium-processing and enrichment activities. Unfortunately, the world was jolted back to reality last month, when Iran brazenly announced it was building centrifuges. Then, in just the latest in a long series of new revelations,[b] IAEA inspectors announced that they found traces of polonium, a radioactive substance which can help trigger a nuclear chain reaction
I thought Fred might be a little lonely in this thread all by his lonesome, so i’m here to add my 2 cents and be good company.
(in a faux-bush 1 voice ala sat nite live)
Iran - baaad
Shah - baaad
Ayatollah - baaad
Khomeini - less baaad
Iranian women - wow.
Iranian Jew - I know 2.
Farsi Smarsi.