The Iran Election Fraud... or maybe not...

Dear Congressman,

It appears over the weekend that the fix was in on the Iranian elections, with everyone's favorite nonsense-talking President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeating his opponent Mir Hossein Mousavi in a supposed landslide vote. Mousavi supporters are up in arms over the alleged theft of the election, with continued rallies in the streets and protests from rooftops. Of course, it doesn't help the Irani government's case that it was a fair vote when they start to block cell phone signals and internet connections as part of the plan to stop the demonstrations, but then Iran has never been a county to shy away from controversy.

However, on the other side of the coin, it appears that a Washington D.C. based non-profit group called "Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion" did a scientific analysis of the Iranian public and published a 70 page report that demonstrated that Ahmadinejad was in fact leading 2-1 in their survey.

I have memories of the original Iranian revolution of 1979, as I was living in Paris at the time and the events dominated headlines and sometimes events there. I clearly remember walking down the Champs-Elysees seeing the building for the Bank of Iran post a huge picture of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in their front window, and the next week walking by and seeing a bullet hole in the glass right through his forehead.

So, would I like to see Ahmadinejad run out of office... you bet. But did he lose the election? Let's collect all the facts before we decide that one...