Some things His Royal Lowness has uttered, in public

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.
George W. Bush

After the chaos and carnage of September 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers.
George W. Bush

America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children.
George W. Bush

America is a Nation with a mission - and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace - a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.
George W. Bush

America is the land of the second chance - and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
George W. Bush

America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
George W. Bush

America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people.
George W. Bush

Americans are rising to the tasks of history, and they expect the same of us.
George W. Bush

Any government that supports, protects or harbours terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.
George W. Bush

Bring them on.
George W. Bush

Do I think faith will be an important part of being a good president? Yes, I do.
George W. Bush

Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
George W. Bush

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.
George W. Bush

Faith crosses every border and touches every heart in every nation.
George W. Bush

For all who love freedom and peace, the world without Saddam Hussein's regime is a better and safer place.
George W. Bush

For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible - and no one can now doubt the word of America.
George W. Bush

Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction.
George W. Bush

Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended.
George W. Bush

Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meeting it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for others because this is America. This is who we are.
George W. Bush

Hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women are deployed across the world in the war on terror. By bringing hope to the oppressed, and delivering justice to the violent, they are making America more secure.
George W. Bush

I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.
George W. Bush

I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman.
George W. Bush

I believe in the transformational power of liberty. I believe that the free Iraq is in this nation's interests. I believe a free Afghanistan is in this nation's interest.
George W. Bush

I believe that God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom.
George W. Bush

I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.
George W. Bush

I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.
George W. Bush

I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.
George W. Bush

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.
George W. Bush

I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.
George W. Bush

I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun.
George W. Bush

I think you can judge from somebody's actions a kind of a stability and sense of purpose perhaps created by strong religious roots. I mean, there's a certain patience, a certain discipline, I think, that religion helps you achieve.
George W. Bush

I understand everybody in this country doesn't agree with the decisions I've made. And I made some tough decisions. But people know where I stand.
George W. Bush

I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to come and witness my hanging.
George W. Bush

I will never relent in defending America - whatever it takes.
George W. Bush

I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.
George W. Bush

If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign.
George W. Bush

Iraq is no diversion. It is a place where civilization is taking a decisive stand against chaos and terror, we must not waver.
George W. Bush

It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.
George W. Bush

It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it.
George W. Bush

It's going to be the year of the sharp elbow and the quick tongue.
George W. Bush

Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time.
George W. Bush

Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.
George W. Bush

Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.
George W. Bush

On September 11 2001, America felt its vulnerability even to threats that gather on the other side of the Earth. We resolved then, and we are resolved today, to confront every threat from any source that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America.
George W. Bush

Only a liberal senator from Massachusetts would say that a 49 percent increase in funding for education was not enough.
George W. Bush

Our nation must come together to unite.
George W. Bush

Our Nation must defend the sanctity of marriage.
George W. Bush

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I'll give you an example; I don't read what's handed to me. People say, 'Here, here's your speech, or here's an idea for a speech.' They're changed. Trust me.
George W. Bush

Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.
George W. Bush

Senator Kerry has been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue.
George W. Bush

Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called "walking."
George W. Bush

Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary, confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror.
George W. Bush

States should have the right to enact laws... particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live.
George W. Bush

Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.
George W. Bush

The action we take and the decisions we make in this decade will have consequences far into this century. If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. That will not happen on my watch.
George W. Bush

The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants.
George W. Bush

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.
George W. Bush

The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.
George W. Bush

The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law.
George W. Bush

The men and women of Afghanistan are building a nation that is free, and proud, and fighting terror - and America is honored to be their friend.
George W. Bush

The momentum of freedom in our world is unmistakable - and it is not carried forward by our power alone. We can trust in that greater power Who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that His purposes are just and true.
George W. Bush

The once all-powerful ruler of Iraq was found in a hole, and now sits in a prison cell.
George W. Bush

The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake, we will show the world that we will pass the test.
George W. Bush

The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States - and war is what they got.
George W. Bush

The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear - and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.
George W. Bush

The thing that's wrong with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur.
George W. Bush

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.
George W. Bush

The tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free.
George W. Bush

The United States and our allies are determined: we refuse to live in the shadow of this ultimate danger.
George W. Bush

The United States of America will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins. The killers will fail, and the Iraqi people will live in freedom.
George W. Bush

The United States prefers that Iraq meet its obligations voluntarily, yet we are prepared for the alternative.
George W. Bush

The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom.
George W. Bush

There's no bigger task than protecting the homeland of our country.
George W. Bush

This was not an act of terrorism, but it was an act of war.
George W. Bush

This way of life is worth defending.
George W. Bush

This young century will be liberty's century.
George W. Bush

To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you, too, can be president of the United States.
George W. Bush

Today we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion and character.
George W. Bush

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.
George W. Bush

We can't allow the world's worst leaders to blackmail, threaten, hold freedom-loving nations hostage with the world's worst weapons.
George W. Bush

We cannot blame the schools alone for the dismal decline in SAT verbal scores. When our kids come home from school do they pick up a book or do they sit glued to the tube, watching music videos? Parents, don't make the mistake of thinking your kid only learns between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.
George W. Bush

We cannot let terrorists hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile.
George W. Bush

We don't believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans.
George W. Bush

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.
George W. Bush

We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own.
George W. Bush

We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbour them.
George W. Bush

We will stand up for our friends in the world. And one of the most important friends is the State of Israel. My administration will be steadfast in support Israel against terrorism and violence, and in seeking the peace for which all Israelis pray.
George W. Bush

We've climbed the mighty mountain. I see the valley below, and it's a valley of peace.
George W. Bush

When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive.
George W. Bush

When you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as the savior, it changes your heart.
George W. Bush

With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.
George W. Bush

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.
George W. Bush

You can't put democracy and freedom back into a box.
George W. Bush

You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.
George W. Bush

Will Google's Greed Ruin the Internet?

By Jeffrey Chester, The Nation. Posted October 6, 2007.

Should we be worried about Google? Ten years after the search engine was launched by two Stanford University graduate students, Google has become an empowering force and adopted behavior that has transformed the way we access news and information, shop for goods and services and -- increasingly -- how we engage in politics. Who would have imagined four years ago, that Google and its subsidiary YouTube would co-sponsor debates in which ordinary citizens could directly engage with presidential candidates?

Last week, Google's stock hit an all-time high, on the strength of reports that the company will earn more this year than the $10.6 billion it earned in 2006. But while Google has almost overnight become a trusted source of information for the technologically attuned, few have thought to question the extent to which its success poses threats to both our privacy and our aspirations for the positive potential of the Internet.

Google's dramatic growth is a reflection of its role as the most powerful player in the world of interactive marketing. Ninety-nine percent of Google's annual revenues (according to its 10K filing with the SEC) comes from selling targeted advertising on its search engine, which is driven by a massive consumer data collection system.

Google is far more than the digital incarnation of Madison Avenue in the twenty-first century. It is the engine driving us into a new communications era, in which interactive marketing will significantly shape our lives. The company is aggressively expanding its advertising role, building out a sales team poised to partner with the biggest brand advertisers on the planet. Google is pitching its souped-up interactive advertising system to global corporations so they can better blend marketing messaged into the news, information and entertainment we consume.

Google's message to Madison Avenue, as expressed at the OMMA Expo in New York this week is that its technology can leverage tremendous insights about global consumers of products and information, and can deliver the right interactive marketing messages to consumers at precisely the right moment. Ellen Naughton, Google's director of media platforms, urged advertisers to "fish where the fish are," a reference to the millions of viewers of online video, including YouTube. Naughton was particularly proud of "Green Tea Partay," a Google-sold video ad that has drawn more than 3 million viewers to date on YouTube. It's a cheeky video, in which Smirnoff Vodka marketing messages are subtly integrated into the insistent beat of an preppy California hip-hop routine.

As Wall Street celebrates Google's success as a marketing platform, the company's plans to extend its business and power are cause for concern, according to a handful of privacy and consumer groups in the US and the European Union, and elsewhere. Google has engaged in a rapid series of acquisitions, giving it control over YouTube (the world's most powerful online video service); Feedburner (which distributes content and ads to more than a half-million blogs and other news feed sites); and it is in the process of acquiring the online data collection behemoth DoubleClick. Much about Google's corporate goals can be gleaned from the $3.1 billion it is willing to pay to control DoubleClick.

As the online ad technology and data collection system favored by Fortune 500 companies, DoubleClick proclaims that its prowess is "...why all 10 of the world's top 10 brands, 8 of the top 10 global agencies and 8 of the top 10 U.S. and European Web sites choose DoubleClick to help meet their digital marketing needs." It has "1,500 of the world's top publisher, advertiser, agency and advertising networks as clients...." Among the attractions DoubleClick also offers: an elaborate data collection operation delivering "billions" of targeted, personalized, interactive ads each day, and a service that allows it to track more than 100 different ways we watch video online (If you're troubled by the drinking messages stealthily embedded in the story line of "Green Tea Partay" video think how marketing messages will permeate YouTube programming once Google finalizes its purchase of DoubleClick.)

Digital Gold Rush

Google isn't alone among the digital giants swallowing up online marketing properties. More than $33 billion has been spent in an ad-industry-focused merger and acquisition spree during the first half of 2007, Advertising Age reported in July. Microsoft, Yahoo!, Time Warner, ad giant WPP, and, of course, Google were among those spending big bucks to acquire firms that collect, analyze and target us largely via stealth and highly sophisticated interactive ad technologies (adding to their empires such interactive marketing entities as Tacoda, BlueLithium, Third Screen Media, and aQuantive).


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The End of Natural Beauty?

This article is reprinted from American Sexuality magazine.

Sixteen was a particularly hard year for me. And not because I was still almost five feet tall, stuck in an Elita, my mouth paying eerie homage to a small cityscape during the industrial revolution. It was because sixteen was the year my mother's daily suggestion to remove the make-up off my moustache, the unkind effect of stale Covergirl foundation atop adolescent peach fuzz, finally got to me. So began our monthly mother-daughter appointments at the aesthetician's house, my upper lip swathed in Emla and Saran Wrap (an unlikely pairing only for the most naïve and hairless) to rid via electrocution every single follicle comprising my hateful orange stache.

A decade later, I couldn't be more thankful. Nor can I help but speculate the impact whiskers might have had on my life thus far. Would I be as successful? As happy? What about my love life? Would my husband have fallen in love with the original, mustached me?

Not a freakin' chance.

Which makes me wonder: Have our standards become too high? Is natural beauty a thing of the past?

"We are beginning to expect to see bodies that have been modified in significant ways, and we are less surprised by bodies that look explicitly manufactured," said Dr. Victoria Pitts-Taylor, associate professor of sociology at City University of New York and author of Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture. According to Pitts-Taylor, over the past twenty odd years, Western notions of beauty have made a decisive shift toward a new "technological aesthetic."

"What counts as natural changes in every culture and epoch," she explained. "I believe we are now undergoing a transformation in our conception of the natural to accommodate high-tech surgery and continual, life-long regimens of cosmetic surgery (and beauty procedures)."

In other words, my husband is either blissfully unaware of my Sasquatch past, or merrily saving for the day we have a daughter of our own.

This prickly dose of reality should come as no surprise; altering our physical appearances to fit the style of the day, or more tellingly, to attract a mate, is a hallmark of Western beauty. Add a slew of plastic surgery makeover shows to the fray (The Swan, Extreme Makeover, and Dr. 90210), and it's a wonder women haven't all shorn their labia yet.

The advent of cosmetic procedures and plastic surgery, while raising our standards of what is (and is not) considered attractive, certainly didn't create them in the first place. Birmingham-based plastic surgeon and blogger Dr. Rob Oliver is quick to point out that "Baywatch Breasts" are not necessarily a new look.

"The 'mature' ptotic female breast (read: droopy boobs) has never been really celebrated ... Corsets and bras dating back to the French courts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were all designed to push up and augment the breast the same way a Wonderbra or implants do now."

To be sure, certain physical qualities in women -- rounded breasts, ample bottoms, small feet, and pouting lips -- have been consistently prized over the centuries. From an evolutionary perspective, such essentially female traits serve as markers of gender, differentiating the sexes and providing a mechanism to allure potential mates. Ergo, by exaggerating what is essentially feminine (or decidedly unmasculine) women can up their attractiveness ante.

Consider the ante officially upped. Today, women across the country (and to a lesser degree men) are approaching their beauty goals with a manic fervor once reserved for Tom Cruise, a couch, and Oprah.

"People judge you by the way you look, and looking well put together gives the impression that you know what you are doing," said *Lesley Jacobs, a fashion merchandiser from Montreal who is seemingly bent on erasing every last hirsute trace of Israeli ancestry from her lithe, twenty-seven-year-old frame. "Plus, guys talk to beautiful girls more."

Apparently for Jacobs, "beautiful girls" loosely translates to "girls without pit hair."

"I was so embarrassed of my underarms that I would never lift my arms up. Even if I shaved, you could still see the black under my arms."

With a salary falling well beneath $50K a year, and approximately nineteen rounds of laser treatments averaging around $500 per treatment, Jacobs is a conspicuous example of just how much women sacrifice to achieve what Pitts-Taylor calls the "technological asthetic." And while it may be hard for some to imagine spending a quarter of their annual income on "bettering" themselves, for many it's a logical choice.

"Once it was necessary to feel stigmatized, ugly, or abnormal to justify getting cosmetic surgery," explained Pitts-Taylor. "Now in the United States there is a rhetoric of empowerment surrounding surgeries. One does it to 'improve' oneself, for example. People express an interest in using cosmetic surgery as a way to take care of themselves."

Take *Amanda Scott, a sales rep from Houston. "I lost a lot of weight years ago and ended up with extremely droopy, small boobs," said Scott, who despite earning less than $50K a year recently had her breasts done to "even out" her proportions.

Tall, fit, and perpetually bronze, Scott, twenty-eight, said her maintenance routine also includes regular mani/pedis, monthly waxes, hair cuts and color as needed, and frequent splurges at the cosmetic counter, a regimen she considers fundamental to her life and career. "As a single woman approaching thirty, I definitely feel a lot of pressure to look a certain way. But I've always known that being attractive helps out career wise as well as romantically."

Whether cosmetic procedures and plastic surgery can actually level the playing field is hard to say. For years, only the wealthiest could afford the hefty costs and downtime demanded by pealing skin, draining tubes, and compression garments. Remarked Pitts-Taylor, "Plastic surgery stratifies our bodies in economic and class-based ways; those who can afford it will wear their financial resources on their bodies."

Could it be that American society is on the cusp of a new class of sorts? One comprised solely of "beautiful" people who have the money to sustain their youth or become "beautiful" in the first place? Forget about the dwindling middle-income earners and the burgeoning, stratospheric division between the rich and poor. There's a new kid in town, and she looks a lot like LA. Call her Class Fab.

And she could be you: "I really don't think there's a danger of have and have-nots," said Oliver.

"Cosmetic surgery has really been 'democratized' between classes as compared to say, twenty, thirty years ago, because it's much easier to find a way to borrow money for it. The financing industry has gone heavy into cosmetic surgery, dentistry, and laser corrective vision surgery.

"All the major banks like Capital One have divisions that are in on this market. It has really made cosmetic surgery and nonsurgical things like laser hair removal available to the masses."

And regarding the long recuperation time once required by traditional surgery, well, that's gone by the wayside too. The emergence of Botox, longer acting injectables (Restylane, Juvederm, Scultptura), and nonablative skin rejuvenation (intense pulsed light, radiofrequency devices, a number of lasers) has enabled a number of treatments to be performed without the traditional downtime of surgery.

How this bodes for women is anyone's guess.

"It was easier to look good ten years ago," said *Daphne Mayfield, a physiotherapist who, despite promised anonymity, still does not want her whereabouts known.

Mayfield has yet to undergo any permanent surgeries or procedures but doesn't rule them out in the future. "Even if I don't agree with it, I want to age as gracefully as possible." Lucky for Mayfield, her husband assures her that by the time her looks fade, so will have his eye sight.

Even so, at fifty-five, it's taking an increasing amount of time each morning for her to paint on that youthful glow. A permanent solution might not be far behind.

*Names have been changed.

Bonnie Zylbergold is the assistant editor of American Sexuality magazine

Bra check upsets court visitor

Taryn Hecker, Staff writer
October 4, 2007
Bonners Ferry, Idaho


A Bonners Ferry woman says she was humiliated when security guards at the federal courthouse in Coeur d'Alene told her she'd have to remove her underwire bra to get inside.

Lori Plato said she was going into the courthouse for a court hearing Sept. 20 when the metal detector went off as she passed through security.

"When I walked through, the gentleman said, "'Do you have an underwire bra on?'." Plato said. "I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'You have to remove it.' "

But there was nowhere private to remove her bra, she said. The guards suggested she go out to her car to do it.

Instead, Plato — who describes herself as "not petite" — said she removed her bra while her husband tried to shield her from view of others in the crowded lobby by holding up his coat.

She said she had to put the bra on a conveyor belt and send it through an x-ray machine.

"After I got through the metal detector and waited for my bra to come through the conveyor belt, one of the security guards said, "'That's a girl,'" Plato said. She thought the guard was making fun of her.


The U.S. Marshal's Service, which supervises security at the courthouse, said Plato was given options and chose not to exercise them. She was told she could have gone to her car or to a neighboring business to remove the bra, U.S. Marshal Patrick McDonald said.

"She's inflating it," McDonald said.

He said Plato turned her back on the security officers, who thought she was simply going to talk to her husband.

"All of a sudden she just took it off," McDonald said. "It wasn't anything we wanted to happen and it wasn't anything we asked for her to do. She did it so fast."

Though he said Plato wasn't ordered to remove her bra, McDonald said she was told she couldn't pass through security wearing it. [Oh that's it, the choice is yours. It's called a Hobson's Choice, take off your bra or be faced with a failure to appear charge.]


He also said Plato is the first person he knows of who has been asked to remove a bra at the courthouse. Ordinarily, bras don't set off the metal detectors, he said.

"I don't think they're considered a weapon, really, the last time I looked," he said.

When Plato contacted the Marshal's Service office seeking an apology, Plato said she was told the guards could have been more sensitive, but no apology was offered.

She also said the Marshal's Service told her that other women had been asked to remove their bras in the past and some simply left the courthouse. But McDonald said he was unaware of similar instances or complaints.

There are private areas on the first floor of the courthouse, McDonald said, but it wasn't an option for Plato to use those rooms to remove her bra because there were no female guards to accompany her past the checkpoint.

At the Kootenai County Courthouse, Peter Barnes, the head of security, said he's not aware of an underwire bra ever setting off metal detectors there.

If that were to occur, Barnes said, security guards likely would use a handheld wand to sweep over the woman's chest.

"We never run into a problem where we thought anything like that was a weapon or looked like a weapon," he said.

McDonald declined to discuss other ways the federal courthouse guards could have screened Plato. "I don't want to get into security matters," he said.

Nobody should be forced to remove their undergarments to enter the courthouse, Plato said.

"It was very humiliating," her husband, Owen Plato, said Wednesday. "They could have handled it with a much more professional attitude. There should have been a privacy screen there at the very least."

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=11803

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Four Myths Government and Media Use to Scare Us About 'Dictators'

By Larry Beinhart, AlterNet. Posted October 2, 2007.

We have a basic mythology: Appeasement of dictators leads to war. The historical basis for this narrative is the "appeasement" of Hitler at Munich. It encouraged him to believe the democracies -- and the Soviets -- were weak and would not oppose him. That led him to attempt more conquests and engulfed us all in the Second World War.

If the other countries had stood up to him right away, the theory goes, he would have backed down. If he hadn't, they would have gone to war and nipped him in the bud, thereby preventing WWII, the Holocaust, the deaths of 60 million and all the rest of the horrors.
Now we are floating the story that Mahmoud Ahmenajad is a dictator (the new, new Hitler, after Saddam Hussein). If we "appease" him, it will only encourage him and that will engulf us in World War Three.

If we accept the myth as a gospel truth that should guide our political and military lives, and accept that description as true, it makes good sense -- it is even necessary -- to start another preventive war, like the one in Iraq, to stop him now! Let us examine the facts.

Fog Fact No. 1: The president of Iran is not a dictator.

He is not even the most powerful person in Iran.

The position of president used to be a figurehead, but recently it was combined with that of prime minister and now has much real power. However, he does not control the army and the intelligence and security services. He does not have the power to go to war.
The president is elected by direct popular vote. There have been five so far. None has served more than two terms. Ahmenajad is in his first term. His previous office was as mayor of Tehran. He is a loud mouth, jingoistic conservative, rather like -- dare we say it? -- the current incarnation of Rudolph Giuliani in his run for U.S. president.

The best way to grasp how Iran is governed is to take its name quite literally: The Islamic Republic of Iran. It is a theocracy, but within the bounds of that -- which are fairly strict bounds -- it is run by elected officials.

The man at the top is called the supreme leader. His constitutional title is "Leader of the Revolution."

The supreme leader is commander-in-chief, with control of the army and the intelligence and security services. He can make the decision to go to war. He has a great many additional powers, including control of the state radio and television networks.

The supreme leader is elected -- and can be dismissed -- by the Assembly of Experts. This is an 86-member congress. They, in turn, are directly elected by popular vote, but must be Mujtahids, Islamic scholars qualified to practice Islamic law.

The way all this is kept under proper Islamic Revolutionary control is that all candidates for everything have to be approved before they can get on the ballot by the Council of Guardians.
There are 12 members. Half are appointed by the supreme leader. The other half are elected by the Iranian parliament from a list supplied by the head of judiciary (who is named by the supreme leader). They are all clerics and scholars of Islamic law. In sum, it is a republic, with many checks and balances, and real elections within theocratic limits. Everybody in government has to be a respectably devout Muslim, with the exception that of the 290 members of parliament there are five representatives from the recognized minority religions (two Armenian Christian, one Chaldean/Assyrian Catholic, one Jewish, one Zoroastrian).

An Iranian, or some other opponent of the United States, might claim that the cost of running for office here creates a de facto council of the wealthy that vets all candidates, excluding anyone who would work against their interests. They might also note that the elected members of the U.S. federal government are 93 percent Christian (including Catholics and Mormons), 7 percent Jewish, with a single Muslim, no pantheists and no atheists, almost a religious mirror image, of the makeup of the Iranian political class.

Fog Fact No. 2: The "appeasement" in the myth is very specific and rather narrow.

It refers to one country taking over the territory -- or the whole -- of another country. Then the world allowing that to stand. In 1938, Germany under Hitler annexed Austria. Hitler had already remilitarized the Rhineland -- which was supposed to be a demilitarized zone protecting France -- and taken over the Saar, a small area rich with coal and iron. Then he took over the Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia. Its population, which was over 80 percent ethnically German, desired the annexation. However, it contained most of Czechoslovakia's defenses against Germany, which meant that if Germany wanted to take the rest, it would be able to so at will.

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