Sparrow wrote:

Iranians are the most pro-Western population in the Middle East, some
say.
Iran was converted to Islam by Mohammed's invading army; previously it
was Zoroastrian.
During Mohammed's career as "prophet", he made 73 preemptive wars of
aggression, and was only attacked once.
Persians are descended from Aryan tribes, and Hegel referred to the
Persia as history's first country.
See the photos athttp://Muvy.org

Iran would still have a Democratic government today if the CIA hadn't
destroyed it on behalf of the western Oil Cartel.

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views03/0810-06.htm

We Had a Democracy Once, But You Crushed It
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

In Thursday's Washington Post, Condoleeza Rice, the President's National
Security Advisor, writes the following:

"Our task is to work with those in the Middle East who seek progress
toward greater democracy, tolerance, prosperity and freedom. As
President Bush said in February, 'The world has a clear interest in the
spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not
breed ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a
better life.'"

Now, if we only had a nickel for every time Bush, or Rice, or Colin
Powell, or Paul Wolfowitz or ***** Cheney or Richard Perle or Donald
Rumsfeld talked about bringing democracy to the Middle East.

Talk, talk, talk.

Here's something you can bet on: Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz will not hold a
press conference this month to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the
U.S.-led coup of the democratically elected leader of Iran -- Mohammed
Mossadegh.

Rice and Powell won't hold a press conference to celebrate Operation
Ajax, the CIA plot that overthrew the Mossadegh.

That was 50 years ago this month, in August 1953.

That's when Mossadegh was fed up with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company --
now BP -- pumping Iran's oil and shipping the profits back home to the
United Kingdom.

And Mossadegh said -- hey, this is our oil, I think we'll keep it.

And Winston Churchill said -- no you won't.

Mossadegh nationalized the company -- the way the British were
nationalizing their own vital industries at the time.

But what's good for the UK ain't good for Iran.

If you fly out of Dulles Airport in Virginia, ever wonder what the word
Dulles means?

It stands for the Dulles family -- Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
and his brother, the CIA director, Allen Dulles.

They were responsible for the overthrow of the democratically elected
leader of Iran.

As was President Theodore Roosevelt's grandson, Kermit Roosevelt, the
CIA agent who traveled to Iran to pull off the coup.

Now why should we be concerned about a coup that happened so far away
almost 50 years ago this month?

New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer puts it this way:

"It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the
Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic revolution to the fireballs
that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York."

Kinzer has written a remarkable new book, All the Shah's Men: An
American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Wiley, 2003).

In it, he documents step by step, how Roosevelt, the Dulles boys and
Norman Schwarzkopf Sr., among a host of others, took down a
democratically elected regime in Iran.

They had freedom of the press. We shut it down.

They had democracy. And we crushed it.

Mossadegh was the beacon of hope for the Middle East.

If democracy were allowed to take hold in Iran, it probably would have
spread throughout the Middle East.

We asked Kinzer - what does the overthrow of Mossadegh say about the
United States respect for democracy abroad?

"Imagine today what it must sound like to Iranians to hear American
leaders tell them -- 'We want you to have a democracy in Iran, we
disapprove of your present government, we wish to help you bring
democracy to your country.' Naturally, they roll their eyes and say --
"We had a democracy once, but you crushed it,'" he said. "This shows how
differently other people perceive us from the way we perceive ourselves.
We think of ourselves as paladins of democracy. But actually, in Iran,
we destroyed the last democratic regime the country ever had and set
them on a road to what has been half a century of dictatorship."

After ousting Mossadegh, the United States put in place a brutal Shah
who destroyed dissent and tortured the dissenters.

And the Shah begat the Islamic revolution.

During that Islamic revolution in 1979, Iranians held up Mossadegh's
picture, telling the world - we want a democratic regime that resists
foreign influence and respects the will of the Iranian people as
expressed through democratic institutions.

"They were never able to achieve that. And this has led many Iranians to
react very poignantly to my book," Kaizer told us. "One woman sent me an
e-mail that said - 'I was in tears when I finished your book because it
made me think of all we lost and all we could have had.'"

Of course, the overthrow of Mossadegh was only one of the first U.S.
coups of democratically elected regime. (To see one in movie form, pick
up a copy of Raoul Peck's Lumumba, now on DVD.)

Kinzer's previous books include Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American
Coup in Guatemala.

He's thinking of putting together a boxed set of his books on American
coups.

Get copies of Bitter Fruit and All The Shah's Men.

Read them.

And the next time a politician talks about spreading democracy around
the globe, ask them about Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, Patrice Lumumba in
the Congo, and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.

--

http://911research.wtc7.net
http://stj911.org
http://stopthelie.com/1-hour_guide_to_911.html
http://www.911truth.org

Here's what happens to steel framed buildings exposed
to raging infernos for hours on end.

http://davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr69c.html

On 9-11-01, WTC7, a 47 story steel framed building, which
had only small, random fires, dropped in perfect symmetry
at near free fall speed as in a perfectly executed controlled
demolition.

http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/wtc/videos.html
http://wtc7.net/articles/FEMA/WTC_ch5.htm

Ever wonder who benefits from the 300 MILLION
U.S. taxpayer dollars spent each DAY in Iraq?
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0223-08.htm
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=21

"They are waging a campaign of murder and destruction. And
there is no limit to the innocent lives they are willing to
take... men with blind hatred and armed with lethal weapons
who are capable of any atrocity... they respect no laws of
warfare or morality."
-bu$h describing his own illegal invasion of Iraq.
http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/
http://www.truthout.org/
http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/
http://thirdworldtraveler.com/
http://counterpunch.org/
http://responsiblewealth.org/

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things
that matter." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is
not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."
-- Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

Don't let bu$h do to the United States what his very close
friend and top campaign contributor, Ken Lay, did to Enron...