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Iran Hard-liners Set to Win Polls, End Reform Era

"TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's conservative clerics urged voters not to boycott Friday's widely criticized elections, which hard-liners look sure to win and bring an end to President Mohammad Khatami's struggle to reform the Islamic Republic."

"Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, whose surprise choice for the 2003 peace prize shone a global spotlight on the drive for human rights in Iran, said this week she would back the boycott campaign and stay away from the polling booths."

"Most analysts expect the turnout on Friday, in which some 46 million Iranians aged 15 and over are entitled to vote, to be well below the 67 percent who voted in 2000 elections, when reformist allies of Khatami triumphed. A low turnout could undermine the authority of the result."

"In what many reformers fear could be a sign of things to come, the hardline judiciary on Thursday sealed the campaign headquarters of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, led by Khatami's brother, and blocked access to its news Web Site."

"The Participation Front has refused to enter any candidates after most of its hopefuls were barred."

"Two of the most outspoken reformist newspapers were closed on Wednesday for daring to report an unprecedented scathing open letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by dozens of the reformist lawmakers banned from Friday's poll."

"They are blocking our channels of communication with the people," Ali Shakourirad, one of the deputies and a leading member of the Participation Front, told Reuters."

"Criticizing the absolute Islamic leader is an offence, and the Supreme National Security Council had ordered newspapers not to report the six-page letter in which deputies accused Khamenei of presiding over a system that trampled on people's"

The harder the Ayatollahs press the quicker the revolution comes. God help us if Jane Fonda Kerry gets elected. Read between the lines on your globe people. Look at Afghanistan and Iraq and read between the lines. The Iranian youth want US style democracy and are pro-US. We must stay the fight in the WOT and Kerry or any democrat is a threat to that. The Ayatollahs in Iran know this and they also know Iraq can never become a democracy if they are to keep power in Iran. A democrat cannot be trusted to follow through to the true ending of a war on terror and that would be the fall of the Ayatollahs in Iran.

A vote for a democrat is a vote for terror because they do not understand the big picture and think the WOT is just about getting OBL. President Bush understands it is not only about OBL and will do what it takes to end this new war properly by draining the swamp. Iran is a big supplier of weapons to those mosquitoes hatching in the swamp, Iran is also the number one state sponsor of terrorist in the world today. The Ayatollahs must fall for the WOT to truly end!

Assume for a minute that it turns out difinitiely proven that Saddam had no WMDs and was nowhere getting them. The only way we could know that for sure was to depose Saddam. Everything else was just guessing. So the only relevant question is, are we safer with Saddam gone and knowing he had no WMDs, or with Saddam in power and never being sure? The bottom line is it's better to be safe than sorry.

The reality though is not so cut and dried. Missing in most of the reporting on David Kay's testimony is the fact that he said the situation in Iraq may have been more frightening that even the CIA had assesed. Various Iraqi agencies were being paid to produce components for WMDs with minimal centralized control. Scientists were keeping deadly toxins in their home refrigerators. WMDs were not adequately tracked, and Al Qaeda operatives were passing through Iraq on a regular basis. In short the Iraqi regime more closely resembled the Sopranos than the Third Reich. In that atmosphere it individual Iraqis may easily have passed WMD components and information on to terrorists without Saddam even knowing it. That is unlikely to happen now. Again, better safe than sorry.