Cite? The only credible “funding of terrorism” I’ve seen from Saddam was paying the widows of suicide bombers, which I believe the Saudis do also, and which you can certainly make an argument for. (Objecting to this seems kind of equivalent to supporting suing the bin Laden family.)
If we attacked every country with government support for terrorists by our definition, we’d be very busy.
Yes, the West Bank (and Gaza) had a democratic election, and of course we’re supporting the winner whole heartedly. :rolleyes: Bush’s last trip, and Condi’s ascendancy seems to show they are getting a bit more realistic. I haven’t seen a lot of people without strong political biases who think the ME is in much better shape than it was 7 years ago.
No. The country did not become expressly more repressive threough the 1990s. The people keep exerting influence to move the government to a more open position, following which the theocrats shut down the process. However, even then, the theocrats have had to pretend to follow the rules by disestablishing political parties on trumped up charges rather than simply declaring masses of people to be outlaws. I do not share jayjay’s optimism that Iran would have thrown off the theocrats by now, but the time is coming when they will and making stupid statements branding the nation as an enemy of ciilization (and thus invoking the patriotism of the people to accept the theocrats’ rulings–much as the U.S. populace accepted the Patriot act), is the wrong action to take to produce the desired outcome.
Uh huh. Well, making things appear to be more legal doesn’t make anyone more free.
In any case, I refreshed my memory on Iran by consulting Freedom House, whose research in this area I typically find to be dead on. It shows that freedom in Iran, along with economic conditions, worsened considerably until 1997, when reformists of a stripe briefly won power. They fell victim to a crackdown in 2000, well before the current administration took power.
However much the regime might have become hardened by Bush administration policies since 2001, the fact remains that the fundamental nature of the regime hasn’t changed much since 1979.
You seem to be basing your assessment of the regime changes on this relatively brief change and on demographic trends. I hope for change there as well, but I’m not closing my eyes while I hold out the olive branch.