Iranian Alert -- November 20, 2003 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD

The US media almost entirely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, “this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year.” But most American’s are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East.

There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in Iran today. Starting June 10th of this year, Iranians have begun taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy. Many even want the US to over throw their government.

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movement in Iran from being reported. Unfortunately, the regime has successfully prohibited western news reporters from covering the demonstrations. The voices of discontent within Iran are sometime murdered, more often imprisoned. Still the people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against the regime.

In support of this revolt, Iranians in America have been broadcasting news stories by satellite into Iran. This 21st century news link has greatly encouraged these protests. The regime has been attempting to jam the signals, and locate the satellite dishes. Still the people violate the law and listen to these broadcasts. Iranians also use the Internet and the regime attempts to block their access to news against the regime. In spite of this, many Iranians inside of Iran read these posts daily to keep informed of the events in their own country.

This daily thread contains nearly all of the English news reports on Iran. It is thorough. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary. The news stories and commentary will from time to time include material from the regime itself. But if you read the post you will discover for yourself, the real story of what is occurring in Iran and its effects on the war on terror.

I am not of Iranian heritage. I am an American committed to supporting the efforts of those in Iran seeking to replace their government with a secular democracy. I am in contact with leaders of the Iranian community here in the United States and in Iran itself.

If you read the daily posts you will gain a better understanding of the US war on terrorism, the Middle East and why we need to support a change of regime in Iran. Feel free to ask your questions and post news stories you discover in the weeks to come.

If all goes well Iran will be free soon and I am convinced become a major ally in the war on terrorism. The regime will fall. Iran will be free. It is just a matter of time.

PS I have a daily ping list and a breaking news ping list. If you would like to receive alerts to these stories please let me know which list you would like to join.

Europe and U.S. near deal on Iran resolution

Thu 20 November, 2003 18:29
By Louis Charbonneau

VIENNA (Reuters) - European and U.S. diplomats are inching closer to an agreement on a draft U.N. nuclear resolution that would condemn Tehran's 18-year cover-up of the full extent of its atomic programme, diplomats say.

Members of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Board of Governors have been meeting behind closed doors on Thursday to find a compromise and one Western diplomat told Reuters Europe and Washington were now "closer to an agreement"

The resolution could possibly be put to the board on Friday, the diplomat said.

France, Germany and Britain first proposed chiding Iran for "failures to meet safeguards obligations", a phrasing too mild for the United States. They also did not call for reporting Iran to the U.N. Security Council, as U.S. officials had wanted.

Under pressure from Washington, which accuses Iran of developing atomic weapons, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei and the eight other present and future EU countries on the board, Europe's "big three" circulated a revised draft resolution, seen by Reuters, that "strongly deplores Iran's past breaches".

This was closer to Washington's thinking, but not close enough.

Diplomats said U.S. negotiators had agreed to forgo reporting Iran to the Security Council, which could impose sanctions, but still insist Iran be declared in "non-compliance" with international non-proliferation obligations.

"We are considering an implicit reference to non-compliance, perhaps something like 'we hope Iran will be in compliance in the future', but we don't know if the Americans will accept that," a diplomat close to the negotiations told Reuters.

But Iran's ambassador to the IEAE, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Reuters any reference to non-compliance in an IAEA resolution would be "unacceptable to Iran".

The United States also wanted the resolution to include a "trigger mechanism" in the event of further breaches by Iran.

A trigger is in the revised draft -- a clause calling for the board to meet and decide on "measures to be taken" in the event that further breaches are uncovered, though it was unclear if this was satisfactory to U.S. negotiators.

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters the United States was now trying to exert the maximum influence on the resolution.

"They are looking for excuses to send Iran's case to the Security Council but initiatives from us and the Europeans remove the excuses," he said.

ELBARADEI WANTS A STRONG RESOLUTION

ElBaradei appeared to back U.S. reservations about the original European draft resolution and called on the board to approve a text that both "strengthens my hand" and reacts to the "the bad news and the good news" about Iran's atomic activities.

Iran denies having a secret atomic weapons programme and says it only wants nuclear power to generate electricity.

But in a new report on Iran, the IAEA said over the last two decades Tehran had failed to comply with obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by -- among other things -- secretly producing plutonium and enriching uranium.

While ElBaradei's report said there was no clear evidence to support U.S. allegations that Iran had a secret atomic weapons programme, he said the jury was still out on whether Tehran's nuclear ambitions were entirely peaceful as it insists.

Iran recently agreed to sign an Additional Protocol to the NPT, which gives the IAEA the right to conduct more intrusive, snap inspections of atomic sites.

Although Tehran has yet to sign the document, ElBaradei said the IAEA was working as if it had been signed and ratified.

Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright, now head of the Institute for Science and International Security, a U.S.-based think-tank, told Reuters there would probably be more revelations about Iran's nuclear secrets in the coming months.

"It's hard to believe they didn't have a weapons programme at some point," Albright said. "Why else would you start an enrichment programme in the middle of an Iran-Iraq war?"

(Additional reporting by Tehran bureau and Francois Murphy in Vienna).

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=406755&section=news

Iran May be Censured for Nuclear Activity

November 20, 2003
The Associated Press
USA Today

VIENNA, Austria -- Seeking to avoid a rift with the United States, European nations discussed increasing censure of Iran over its past covert nuclear activities as they prepared for a key meeting of the U.N. atomic agency.

The United States had hoped that the 35-nation board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency would find Tehran in noncompliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at its meeting, which opens Thursday.

It rejected a proposed West European draft resolution that would urge Iran to continue cooperation with the agency but refrain from harshly condemning it for concealing parts of its nuclear program, saying it was prepared to opt for no resolution rather than a toothless one.

IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei also was unhappy with the lack of stronger language in the European proposal, a diplomat familiar with his thinking said. Drawn up by France, Germany and one of Washington's closest allies, Britain, the rough draft minimized nearly two decades of covert nuclear programs that the U.S. administration says point to an effort to develop nuclear weapons.

Instead, it focused on positive steps taken by Iran over the past few weeks to deflect international suspicions, including suspending uranium enrichment and agreeing to inspections on demand by IAEA inspectors.

Hopes for compromise grew after 25 European nations — The 15-member European Union and 10 others set to join next year — met late into Wednesday night in an attempt to minimize differences with the "group of four" — the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan.

A senior diplomat, who reported on the meeting on condition of anonymity, said the main point of discussion was "how to deal with Iran's past nuclear activities."

Whereas the initial West European wording chastised Iran for "failure to fulfill its obligations," there was discussion at the late Wednesday meeting of stronger language — either including past "noncompliance" of IAEA agreements on the part of Iran, or finding it in "breach of its obligations."

Both would be more acceptable to the United States and its allies, said the diplomat. He said the proposed language would likely be discussed between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush as well as between Secretary of State Colin Powell and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer,

The three West European sponsors of the draft "want to see continued cooperation and transparency from Iran," said another senior Western diplomat.

He said the draft would make clear that the board would not accept "repetition of past mistakes, deceit or tricks," and would urge Iran to immediately open its nuclear programs to pervasive inspections even before the agreement is ratified.

It would also ask Iran to maintain its commitment to suspending uranium enrichment — one of the activities that raised suspicions when discovered early this year.

While the Americans have no dispute with those demands, they were dismayed that the initial proposed draft glossed over activities such as uranium enrichment and experimental plutonium processing that they say violate the Nonproliferation Treaty, the diplomats said.

But IAEA director general ElBaradei also sought a tougher stance. He took the Iranians to task for effective breaches of the Nonproliferation Treaty in a report that also, however, concluded that there was no proof Iran had a weapons agenda.

ElBaradei wants "a strongly worded report" that stops short of asking for Security Council involvement, a step that could lead to sanctions against Iran, one diplomat said.

The West Europeans fear too much pressure would turn Iran from cooperation to confrontation and hope to help Iran with its peaceful nuclear programs. But several diplomats suggested the dispute also reflected West European independence similar to that shown by the French-German attempt to scuttle the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Washington was particularly dismayed that Britain, its staunchest ally in Iraq, was siding with the French and Germans over Iran, they said.

The Americans see the draft as "another (European) chance to stick your thumb in the eyes of the United States," said one.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-11-20-iran-nuke-censure_x.htm

US Rejects European Compromise on Iran Resolution

November 20, 2003
Reuters
Louis Charbonneau

VIENNA -- France, Britain and Germany revised a draft U.N. nuclear resolution on Thursday in a bid to satisfy U.S. demands that the U.N. strongly condemn Iran, but it was not critical enough of Tehran for Washington's hard-liners.

Members of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Board of Governors have been meeting behind closed doors to find a compromise on a resolution condemning Iran's 18-year concealment of the full extent of its nuclear program.

France, Germany and Britain originally proposed a resolution chiding Iran for "failures to meet safeguards obligations," a phrasing too mild for the United States. It also did not call for reporting Iran to the U.N. Security Council, as U.S. officials had wanted.

Under pressure from Washington, which accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei and the eight other present and future EU countries on the 35-nation IAEA board, Europe's "big three" changed the draft to say the board "strongly deplores (Iran's) breaches," a diplomat said.

This was closer to Washington's thinking, but not close enough. Diplomats said U.S. negotiators had agreed to forgo reporting Iran to the Security Council, which could impose sanctions, but still insist that Iran be declared in "non-compliance" with international non-proliferation obligations.

The United States also wants the resolution to include a "trigger mechanism" in the event of further breaches by Iran.

Washington has only a few allies on the board -- Canada, Australia, Japan and New Zealand. But diplomats said small groups of board members were having unofficial meetings to agree on a new compromise that would make the Americans happy.

ELBARADEI: IRAN GUILTY OF "BREACHES"

ElBaradei appeared to back U.S. reservations about the original European draft resolution and called on the board to approve a text that both "strengthens my hand" and reacts to the "the bad news and the good news" about Iran's atomic activities.

"The bad news is that there have been failures and breaches and the good news is that there is a new chapter in cooperation with Iran," he said.

Iran denies having a secret atomic weapons program and says it only wants nuclear power to generate electricity.

But in a new report on Iran, the IAEA said over the last two decades Tehran had failed to comply with obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by -- among other things -- secretly producing plutonium and enriching uranium.

While ElBaradei's report said there was no clear evidence to support U.S. allegations that Iran had a secret atomic weapons program, he said the jury was still out on whether Tehran's nuclear ambitions were entirely peaceful as it insists.

"(Iran's) breaches and failures are, of themselves, a matter of deep concern and run counter to the both the letter and spirit of the (NPT) Safeguards Agreement," he told the IAEA board.

Iran recently agreed to sign an Additional Protocol to the NPT, which gives the IAEA the right to conduct more intrusive, snap inspections of atomic sites.

Although Tehran has yet to sign the document, ElBaradei said the IAEA was working as if it had been signed and ratified.

"We are acting as if the protocol is in force and we have been getting all the access we need, both to locations and to information," he said.

Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright, now head of the Institute for Science and International Security, a U.S.-based think-tank, told Reuters there would probably be more revelations about Iran's nuclear secrets in the coming months.

"It's hard to believe they didn't have a weapons program at some point," Albright said. "Why else would you start an enrichment program in the middle of an Iran-Iraq war?"

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3862948

Nuclear Agency Deadlocked on Iran

November 20, 2003
BBC News
BBCi

The governors of the UN's nuclear watchdog have failed to agree on how to deal with Iran's nuclear programme.

The United States is pressing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to take strong measures against Tehran, but has only moderate support.

The executive body of the IAEA met for a only a few hours in a heated, private session before adjourning until Friday.

IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei recently reported that Iran had violated the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

He said that Iran had secretly produced plutonium and enriched uranium - materials that can be used in nuclear weapons.

Iran has admitted to some violations but says its nuclear programme is peaceful.

Critical wording

Britain, France and Germany reportedly have proposed that the IAEA "strongly deplore Iran's past breaches", but Washington wants stronger language.

The US, which is not convinced that Tehran's atomic programme is peaceful, wants Iran to be declared in "non-compliance" with the NPT.

Such a statement would automatically send the issue to the UN Security Council - which can impose sanctions.

Iran has warned that such a development would trigger an international crisis.

Britain, France and Germany want to encourage Iran to continue co-operating with the IAEA.

'Right track'

Mr ElBaradei said before the meeting adjourned that the agency was "on the right track" and he hoped for a strong resolution.

The 35-nation board of governors is considering both his report and a draft resolution by France, Germany and Britain - the wording of which is being haggled over with the United States.

In his report, Mr ElBaradei said Iran had committed numerous "breaches" of the NPT, including the secret production of plutonium and enrichment of uranium.

He told reporters as the meeting started that he wanted a resolution which strengthened his hand and addressed "the bad news and the good news" about the Iranian nuclear programme.

"The bad news is that there have been failures and breaches and the good news is that there is a new chapter in co-operation with Iran," he said, adding that the agency was now getting "all the access we need".

The BBC's State Department correspondent Jon Leyne says some officials in Washington are simply trying to keep up the pressure on Iran to end its nuclear programme, but others may feel this is an issue they can use to destabilise a government they profoundly detest.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3286021.stm

U.N. Nuclear Agency Headed Toward Condemning Iran

November 20, 2003
The Associated Press
MSNBC News

VIENNA, Austria -- The United States and European nations were working to bridge a rift over how harshly to censure Iran for 18 years of covert nuclear activity at a key meeting of the U.N. nuclear agency resuming Friday.

The board of governors' meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency was adjourned Thursday only two hours after it started at Iran's request, a senior diplomat said. But the European countries and Washington were using the break to decide how far to go in recognizing Iran's recent willingness to throw open its nuclear facilities to agency inspections.

By late Thursday, Washington had persuaded the Europeans to accept language ''much stronger'' than what Britain, France and Germany had proposed in an initial draft, said a diplomat. That initial proposal urged Iran to continue cooperation with the agency but refrained from harshly condemning it for concealing parts of its nuclear program.

President George W. Bush's administration — which has dubbed Iran as being part of a so-called ''Axis of Evil'' along with North Korea and prewar Iraq — rejected that proposal Wednesday.

Washington insists that Iran wants to build nuclear weapons. Washington wants the IAEA to declare Tehran in violation of its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and pass the matter to the Security Council, a move which could trigger sanctions against Iran.

Iran, which is awash with oil and gas reserves, says its nuclear program is only geared toward generating electricity.

Reflecting the seriousness of the divide between Washington and Europe, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair would try to find common ground on the issue while Bush was in London, a senior diplomat told The Associated Press.

By late Thursday, one diplomat said, ''things look a lot better'' for the United States.

Under the stronger draft, the board reserves the right to immediately call an emergency session should any evidence surface that Iran was guilty of ''significant failures.''

The IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said he wants a strongly worded report that nonetheless stops short of asking for Security Council involvement.

The agency still doesn't know if Iran has tried to build nuclear weapons. That, ElBaradei told the board, ''will take some time and much verification effort.''

Also Thursday, diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity told the AP that the agency has identified Russia, China and Pakistan as among probable sources for equipment used by Iran for possible nuclear weapons development. They gave no other details.

Identification of some of Iran's nuclear supplier nations brings the agency closer to solving the puzzle over Tehran's past nuclear activities which the Americans and others say point to a weapons agenda.

While acknowledging that some of its enrichment centrifuges had traces of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, Iran insists its enrichment program was low-level and only for power generation. It asserts the high-level traces were inadvertently imported on material it purchased abroad.

http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/ap11-20-164048.asp?reg=EUROPE

Nothing to Lose But Their Chains

November 20, 2003
The Spectator
Michael Ledeen

The most controversial part of George W. Bush’s vision of the war against terrorism is his insistence that this is a war against tyranny, and that we will not be able to win the war until we have helped democratic revolutions succeed in the key countries, those that provide the terrorists with much of their vital wherewithal. It’s controversial for varying reasons, depending on the critic. Some say that countries are marginal in the terror universe; it’s transnational organisations like al-Qa’eda which we must defeat. Others are upset because they think the President is declaring war on any country, anywhere, that helps the terrorists, and they ask where the money and the troops will come from. Still others are critical of Bush’s belief that the Middle East can be successfully democratised at all, and wish that the United States would either give up this crazy dream, or get serious about building an empire and find proper viceroys, etc.

A bit over a year ago I published a book that argued precisely this thesis (The War Against the Terror Masters), and my main complaint about the coalition’s performance thus far is that we have been too cautious, too slow, and, above all, that we have failed to support the democratic opposition forces which threaten the countries that sponsor terror and are primarily responsible for the terror war we now face in Iraq (and which I predicted many months before the liberation of Iraq).

Our enemies in Damascus, Tehran and Riyadh are all tyrants, which is their common denominator. Note that our enemies are not, as is commonly presumed, jihadists, since the Baathist regime in Syria, like its late brother in Iraq, came to power as a secular Arab socialist regime, not as a step along the road to a fundamentalist caliphate. This is not a clash of civilisations; it’s an old-fashioned war of freedom against tyranny. The President is entirely right on this point.

Our failures to date are primarily the result of bad intelligence and insufficient attention to the peoples of the region (which go hand in hand, you’ll notice). If we had supported the Iraqi democratic opposition (as was required by American law, and for which considerable sums were appropriated but never disbursed, because the state department didn’t think it was a good idea), we would be in a better position to find out what is really going on inside the country, instead of having one general tell us that we’re mostly under attack from foreigners, and another general say no, it’s mostly enraged Saddam followers.

The CIA and the state department have seemingly spent more energy on defeating the Iraqi National Congress — the umbrella opposition organisation led by Ahmad Chalabi — than on overthrowing Saddam and working with the opposition to plan for the postwar period. Iran has created at least a dozen radio and television stations to spread its poison throughout Iraq, while the United States only recently got its first national radio station on the air. If we were serious about enlisting the people, we’d have been prepared to talk to them from the outset. So when you think about the Dubya Doctrine of spreading democratic revolution, remember that he’s got the bureaucracy working against him.

It was a mistake to think about Iraq as a thing in itself, as if we could detach it from the regional context and ‘solve’ it alone. During the 14 or 15 months from Afghanistan to Iraq, the terror masters made a war plan that called for replicating the successes of Lebanon in the Eighties: kidnapping, assassination, suicide bombs and terrorist attacks — mostly from Hezbollah — eventually drove out both American and French armed forces. They made no secret of their intentions — Iranian and Syrian leaders openly announced them, but the war planners apparently either ignored them or laughed it off.

Iran has always been the most powerful and the most lethal of the terror masters (Hezbollah is an Iranian creation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Islamic Republic), but it also holds another record of sorts: it is the first example of a totally failed Shiite Islamist state. The crazed leaders of the Islamic Republic have wrecked and ransacked the country for their own personal profit, oppressed, enslaved, murdered and tortured the Iranian people, and supported the killers of thousands of innocent people all over the world. The Iranian people hate this regime. They have expressed their hatred in every imaginable way, from mass demonstrations to amazingly candid replies to pollsters, to sending heartbreaking faxes and emails to people in the West who seem to understand their plight and share their dreams of freedom.

If the mullahs were brought down, they would certainly be replaced by a democratic government that separated mosque and state and gave the Iranian people a major voice in the country’s policies. There are very few knowledgeable people who doubt this, and this has been a major theme of the Dubya Doctrine all along. But to our shame the words have not been accompanied by action, either in Washington or London or any other Western capital, even though all are agreed that Iran is the leading terror master, that many of our troubles in Iraq are the result of Iranian actions or the actions of Iranian proxies, and that the Iranian people are ready to take to the streets against the mullahcracy in the same way the Serbs organised to bring down Milosevic.

Iran is ready for democratic revolution, and it is the key to the terror network. Ergo we should be supporting democratic revolution in Iran, and we should get on with it quickly before they show us that they have finally built an atomic bomb. It is hard to argue that Iran is somehow incapable of democracy, or that the mullahcracy should be tolerated any longer, let alone supported. Yet European and UN ‘diplomatic missions’ regularly show up in Tehran, occasionally mutter a few critical remarks about human rights violations or suspicious uranium samples, and then go away. I think we would do a lot better to recite the known facts about Iran every day, and give the Iranian people the support they deserve: round-the-clock broadcasting to encourage them to be brave, money to support potential strikes in the country’s crucial oil and gas and textile industries, communications toys like satellite phones so that they can communicate with one another when the regime shuts down the cells, as was done last summer on the eve of an announced national strike. Instead, we have remained aloof and even made highly misleading remarks (take the deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, who proclaimed Iran ‘a democracy’; and the secretary of state Colin Powell, who, on the verge of the planned uprising last summer, said the United States really didn’t want to get involved in the Iranians’ ‘family squabble’.) Many Iranians felt betrayed, since they had earlier heard the President’s numerous statements about the need to spread freedom in their region.

My guess is that if we show we are serious about supporting the democratic opposition in Iran, the mullahcracy will fall and the contagion will reach all areas of the Middle East. Indeed, some of that has happened already; for example, we have recently seen the first pro-democracy demonstrations in the history of Saudi Arabia. And it cannot be an accident that those demonstrations came shortly after the liberation of Iraq, and the Arabs saw more than 200 Iraqi newspapers spring up, along with countless magazines, new courses at the universities and other signs of intellectual creativity that hadn’t been seen for generations.

I do not believe that Arab or Muslim DNA is mysteriously lacking a democracy chromosome or a freedom gene. I don’t think that democratic revolution is all that difficult, or that it requires some key sociological component such as a middle class or a historical event such as a Reformation or an industrial revolution (Athenian democracy had none of the above). I believe that the advantages of a free society are pretty clear to almost the entire population of the planet, that most people would choose to be free if they were free to choose, and that, thereafter, some would do well and others not, just as in the past. There is no lack of evidence for this, in the Middle East or elsewhere.

For many years the same sorts of objection to the feasibility of democracy in the Middle East were raised against democracy in South America. The Latinos, it was said, just weren’t cut out for it; they liked caudillos too much. And yet during the eight years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency democratic revolution swept the entire region. There were only two elected governments in South America at the beginning, and only two unelected ones in the whole region when he handed the keys to the White House to Bush the Elder.

I think we are on the verge of the same kind of revolutionary transformation in the Middle East today. The real question is not whether it can be done, but whether we have the will to do it. We haven’t been very good in Afghanistan, where American negotiators unaccountably agreed to the creation of an ‘Islamic Republic’ when we should have vetoed the very idea. We haven’t been nearly as active as we should have been in embracing the Iraqis, who have proved many of the pessimists totally wrong: there hasn’t been a religious or ethnic civil war, the Iraqi Shiites have not been manipulated by the Iranians, and there are plenty of talented and educated Iraqis who, given the chance, could do a thoroughly presentable job of managing their country. We’re getting better, but the people of the region are running ahead of us whenever they can. There was a brief ‘Prague Spring’ in Damascus after the death of the old tyrant, but it was crushed soon after. I don’t think it will be that difficult to find suitably democratic forces in Syria in the future, especially if we deal effectively with Iran.

The main thing is to see the situation plainly: we are at war with a group of tyrants who sponsor a network of terrorists. Our most potent weapon against them is their own people, who hate them and wish to be free. We don’t need to invade Iran or Syria or Saudi Arabia, but we certainly need to support the calls for freedom coming from within those tyrannical countries.

And that’s the Dubya Doctrine.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old&section=current&issue=2003-11-22&id=3755

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