FASCINATING DISCUSSION OF THE POLITICS BEHIND THE OPPOSITION.

After the collapse of Saddam Hussein, the (Iranian) mullahs found a new opportunity to put their disinformation machine to work and use it for waging a war they know so well how to win. They have employed the full force of their fundamentalist propaganda network to sabotage the consolidation of democracy in Iraq. They have recognized that there is a direct link between their own survival and the defeat of the allied mission in their neighboring country.

The chief instrument of their campaign is Al-Alam (The World) television channel, which broadcasts hourly bulletins in Arabic into Iraq from a station in Tehran. It portrays the Americans and the British as occupiers, and the Iraqis as the victims of their aggression. Pictures of dead or injured Iraqis are shown lying in the streets in such a manner to pique the pride and stir the national sentiment of the viewers.

Together with the pro-fundamentalist Iraqi newspapers that get their cues from Tehran, Al-Alam injects a daily dose of hatred into the hearts and minds of citizens whose chronic lack of liberty and political experience has turned them into easy prey in the masterful hands of the brainwashers of the Islamic Republic.

The mullahs are too clever to be seen shooting at the Americans themselves. Instead they preach to the Iraqis a kind of violent and xenophobic Islam that if not confronted will continue to cost allied lives and the eventual defeat of their political undertaking.

Another powerful front that the Islamic Republic uses to subvert the cause of peace and democracy in Iraq is the mosque. The underlying message of the pro-Iranian clergy mounting the pulpit of the Shiite mosques can be summed up in one sentence: It is the religious duty of every Iraqi Moslem to defeat 'the foreign aggressors'.

At the bottom of all this relentless propaganda war is the fact that the American presence in Iraq has put the Iranian dictators backs to the wall.

The establishment of a moderate pro-Western democracy in a predominantly Shiite country next door is nothing short of a death sentence for an unpopular regime that has failed miserably to deliver on its promises of liberalization and reform.

Read the whole thing here. It is well worth your time.