LIE OF THE WEEK: 03-10-2006

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Iran:

"We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," she said, describing that country's leadership as "the central banker for terrorism," an oppressor of its own people, a fomenter of unrest in the Middle East and a would-be nuclear power.

THE TRUTH: Why are they always forgetting North Korea? North Korea already has nuclear weapons, supports terrorism, oppresses it's people much more than any other country (millions are starving while nearly all public money is spent on the military). Iran has had many legitimate reform and opposition movements working within their system compared to the consistent oppression by the North Korean regime for the past half century.

Also, let's not forget how each situation started: North Korea came out of the cold war, where it was a struggle between American freedom and Soviet oppression. Iran is a self-inflicted problem for America, where our CIA overthrew a moderate elected government in the 1950s so that we could install and prop up the Shah to oppress his people and give us cheap oil for two decades. Of course, the end result was the overthrow of the Shah through a popular revolution. Even at that point, the Iranians didn't consider us enemies until we sheltered the Shah from prosecution for his crimes, which led to the 1979 hostage crisis. Furthermore, our push for Saddam Hussein to attack Iran in 1980 on our behalf led to an 8-year bloody war with nearly a million deaths on each side (including many Iranians being killed by Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction, which was not considered an significant issue at the time by his American allies.)

If we want to solve our Iran problem, perhaps the first steps would be to apologize for the CIA activities of the 1950s and the support of Saddam during the 1980s, both of which led to so much suffering in that country.