Good news assuming Sunnis casting votes replace Sunnis (and others) blowing things up.

The Iraqi Sunnis stayed home because it was a fair election and they knew they'd lose. The Iranians stayed home because it was rigged. For you to call what happened in Iran "democratic elections" is shameful--it's doubtful even Jimmy Carter would make such a claim.

b:

There's rather little evidence of any vote rigging. The Guardian Council restricted their choices, but did leave them with the choice of a genuine reformer and a pragmatic reformer. The boycott gave them a hard-liner instead.

Huh? The final pairing was the 3rd that was announced. They couldn't even run a rigged election as well as Saddam...

OJ: It looked like vote rigging to me. An officially large turnout is hard to square with polling places that were nearly empty. One Iranian woman was surprised to see herself voting on TV, though she didn't vote this time (official TV was running old footage and claiming it was current).

Such anecdotal evidence is always bogus. Real vote rigging is noticeable. They may have kept Tehram polls open and "encouraged" turnout. Like St. Louis in 2000.

The final pairing was a function of the misguided boycott.

Political life in Iraq seems to be bounding forward what with the development of their own 'reality-based community': "Mr. Dulaimi's group, like many other Sunni groups, insists that Sunnis are not a minority in Iraq, despite various estimates suggesting that they make up about 20 percent of the population."

Such anecdotal evidence is always bogus.

As opposed to election results in totalitarian states, which are reliable?

Iran isn't totalitarian.

By real vote rigging, do you mean the 'switch' in the last Venezuealan election, when the announced result (Chavez, 58 to 42) was almost surely the opposite of the actual result?

Or do you mean what Landslide Lyndon did in 1948 (finding the last box of votes to beat Coke Stevenson in the primary)?

I agree a lot of the anecdotal stuff is bogus (or at least unreliable), like what Jesse Jackson and others bantered about in Florida after the 2000 election (state police checkpoints pulling over blacks on their way to vote).

But how would any American know if the Iranian elections were 'rigged' or not? Sure, it was a mistake for the reform-minded to boycott, but how does that change the fact that the Guardian Council would get its result, no matter what? Do you think a Tiananmen situation in Tehran would have been handled differently by the mullahs?

Real vote rigging is noticeable. They may have kept Tehram polls open and "encouraged" turnout. Like St. Louis in 2000.

Speaking of St. Louis, did you see that a group of prominent East St. Louis Democrats got convicted for paying for votes in 2004?

jim:

They haven't gotten the results they want in the past.

As in, when the ineffectual Khatami was elected? Even though 76% voted for him last time, did he make any difference?

The mullahs used (or even orchestrated) the election of Khatami to fend off the US and the Europeans for a few years. Dance time is over - now it is straight-up muscle for them.

Iran is the biggest threat to the US today, and not just because it seeks the bomb. The heart of modern terrorism is in Tehran, and will likely metastasize in the coming years as the "Guardians" do their thing at home and around the world.

Yes, he made a difference, though the ultimate difference will take someone made of sterner stuff or an insider.

They're no threat to us, they're barely in control of their own country.

A sullen, demoralized, and cowed population is relatively easy to control (in the short-term). See Germany, circa. 1931. Remember, the Nazis' percentage of the vote went down in the last German election. So they struck while they could. The Guardians have about as much legitimacy as the Nazis, but they also have the ruthlessness. Not a pretty future.

Of course Iran is a threat - they could bottleneck the Gulf with a nuclear rattle. They will nibble where they can with proxy terror. And they could light off a bomb or radioactive dispersant in Charleston, Savannah, Tampa, New Orleans, or Long Beach. It is more likely that Iran would do it than NK, in my opinion. They have more to gain. NK is designed to protect one nut - Iran is currently designed to protect tens of thousands, who then use religion to subjugate 70 million.

China is different because of the vast disparity between the cities and countryside. In Iran, the problems (from the mullahs' viewpoint) are in the cities, particularly in Tehran. In China, the current problems are on the fringes. The fresh spirit seen in the universities (in China) back in May of 1989 is gone.

Yes, the Nazis weren't a threat either and had hit the wall within ten years.

Pity we lost Long Beach...

i have a sneaking suspicion we are soon to declare that tehran was the state agent behind 9/11, and will openly declare war on them and wipe every military and weapons facility they have off the face of the earth. they will serve as a nice object lesson to the prc, and to any other rogue regimes.

Having an assassin as President also hearkens back to Germany of the 1930s, or Japan. Now, the US was not first in line when it came to threats back then, but the war came our way in good time.

With Iran, we are the main target, if only for the proxy jihad soldiers. Despite the rhetoric, Iran will leave Israel alone. Any attack on Israel means Iran gets it in spades from Sharon, and ALSO from us.

Plus, Iran's disturbing relationship with Russia is a threat, primarily because Putin cannot hurt us any other way.

Your "non-threat" statements border on negligence, no? What would Gordon Prange say?

Japan was no threat either.