> I felt like, repeatedly, people were
> ignoring the obvious: they [sc. the Iranians?] want a secular government.
Unless you assume really massive electoral fraud -- massive enough to change the result -- of which there is no substantive evidence, then it seems pretty clear that a substantial majority of Iranians *don't* "want a secular government."
Couple of questions:
1) To what extent is the presupposition of massive, result-reversing electoral fraud necessary to the pro-Moussavi case being advanced in this forum? Thought experiment: Suppose all you anti-Ahmadis were somehow to be really convinced that the vote wasn't faked to the point of reversing the result. Would that change your stance in any way? Put a different way -- would you still be for annulling the election if you concluded that Moussavi actually, well, lost it?
2) How *do* we explain the large number of votes -- whatever it may have been -- that Ahmadi surely got? Are the people who voted for him deluded? Are they superstitious backward bigots? We're very familiar with the outlook and motivations of some, at least, of the anti-Ahmadi activists: their words are widely reported and their thinking is very similar and congenial to our own. We don't have such good access to the thoughts and feelings of the folks who voted for A. So what's your hypothesis about these people?
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Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org