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Nowhere did I say we should just wait it out. All I said was that it’s near-impossible for the Iranians to simply throw off the regime by themselves.

How can they be helped, and by whom? (that's not a rhetorical question, I'd like to hear your view on how the Iranian people could best be supported and motivated to overthrow the tyranny that runs their country.

These are different issues we’re talking about here....I’m all for dropping a bomb on Tehran to halt their nuke program. That’s different from talking about the nature of the Iranian people. The “little snakes grow up to be big snakes” is all I was commenting on....I wasn’t making a case for not bombing Iran.

My 'snake' analogy was not invoked on a whim. I refer to the children recruited into the Basiji brigades and used for battlefield fodder during the Iran-Iraq War. Those who survived became a power base for noneother than Ahmadinejad who was an instrumental figure in training those children to serve as human mine sweepers and 'martyrs' for 'allah' during that war (the children who didn't survive naturally aren't around to support him today), have you perhaps read an excellent article by Matthias Kuntzel? If not, it is worth the read:

http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/ahmadinejads-world

I'd like to believe that the Iranian people are more pro-American than we dare to hope, but when I read of Ahmadinejad announcing a 'Basiji Week' in the Fall of 2005 to celebrate his 'election', he got a response of an estimated 9 million Basiji brigade members who formed a human chain damn near 9000 kilometres long!

That's a lotta basiji, that's a lotta jihad.

I hope you're right and that the Iranian people CAN change the suicidal course their nation is on.

If not, it's going to get very ugly, very suddenly.

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

How can they be helped, and by whom?

They ARE motivated to overthrow the tyrrany, but just about every dictator in recent times has been overthrown not from within, but from military help or economic pressure from outside. The Soviet Union fell in the latter way, and Hitler, Mussolini, Napoleon, and Saddam, for example, have fallen the former. The Iraqis did not overthrow Saddam, the Germans did not overthrow Hitler, we pounded the crap out of their armies until they surrendered. Ataturk is the exception that comes to mind; he dissolved the Ottoman empire pretty much single-handedly. What they need is an Iranian Ataturk, or someone who can successfully assassinate both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. If we went to war with Iran we would easily beat them, and Ahmadinejad knows it. The Iranian army is worthless, and it's hardly a match unless he's got nukes. Which is why we should bomb Iran now and pound the crap out of what army they have.

This is the article that talks about the Iranian youth and their views of the US: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-717362,00.html

Quote from article: "A poll conducted by a state-owned company in Tehran in February revealed that 70 per cent of Iranians had a favourable view of the US (which is thus more popular in Iran than in Britain, let alone in France and Germany)."

9 million basijji...Iran's population is around 80 million, there are plenty more decent Iranians out there. 11 million of them did not show up at the ballot box in 05, and Ahmadinejad only won by about 500,000 votes.