[nicollo]

Your notes on the awfulness of the Shah lose meaning when put in the context of the 1980s. The U.S. supported many horrible people -- Saddam, Pinochet, Diem, Faisal, Stroessner, Somoza, Serrano, Marcos... Hell, we can include Mao in the list for Nixon's triangulation scheme. These are not the kindhearted whose loving glow would warm a Georgia peanut. We did all this to fight a larger evil.

The author is correct to state that had we not allowed the Shah to fall the geopolitics of today would be different. There were other options back in 1979 than turning our heads in disgust at it all. God knows shame, at which Carter is an enthusiastic practitioner, is not a quality of leadership.

No, Carter punted.

The Mullahs represented an enormous threat to world stability. With the Russkies in Afghanistan, the Mullahs jumping up and down, revolution in the Americas, Saddam was a convenient and very useful Cold War tool.

Comparing the Shah to Saddam is not an argument. The question remains: would it have been different had we intervened in Iran?

Very different.