I'm always disturbed to find that if I actually was forced to vote for one of these candidates I would actually have to vote for Ron Paul. Sure the libertarians are selfish and crazy, but at least there's an upside to libertarians (against the Drug War, against worldwide empire etc.) wheras the others are Big Government Conservatism (ironically, something Iran is also very big on).

Where is the real Rick Santorum? What have they done with him?

Santorum also said no abortions in cases of rape.

"They are under a melocracy"???

Of course they were better off under the Shah, because we controlled them by proxy. American Empire bullshit. We'll be better off in 40 years when the present neocons are all quite dead.

Iran is more liberal than Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, the UAE, Oman, Afghanistan, Iraq and several central Asian republics. Most Persian people are far more liberal than your average evangelical American, however their government is not representative of this. Whatever. They took over our embassy in 1979 so they are the devil now.

but the shah was installed by BP and the CIA so clearly, he was the ideal ruler.

Seriously. We have none but ourselves to thank for taking a parliamentary country with a sound Shia tradition of seperation of church and state and turning it into a hardline theocracy.

And who GAVE the Iranians the Shah? Or rather gave him back to them? That would be the CIA.

It's insane how we learn nothing from our silly misadventures around the world. Absolutely nothing.

@1 Yeah, I feel the same way. Libertarians may be nuts but at least their principles are consistent - when they say they want small government, they mean it, and this includes no anti-gay or anti-abortion legislation because that's not small government.

All the "small government" republicans who are anti-gay and anti-choice are deliciously hypocritical.