In other comic strip-related news, ombudsman Christine Chinlund is campaigning to replace the Boston Globe’s token conservative strip, Mallard Fillmore, with Prickly City, now that “Mallard, which runs in nearly 400 papers and is the dominant conservative strip, is no longer the only choice.”

Like other level-headed bloggers like John Hinderaker, I have some doubts. It's not impossible - the mainstream media would never have reported this story, and after Davos, many bloggers were wrapped up in the outrage over Eason Jordan's remarks. But the quoted comments would be unusually reckless from a former President who is usually careful with his words and supportive of the United States when he speaks to overseas audiences. In Arab News, the Saudi English-language daily, Amir Taheri reports that President Clinton "feels ideologically most at home" in Iran:

Here is what Clinton said at a meeting on the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, just a few weeks ago: “Iran today is, in a sense, the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is there that the ideas that I subscribe to are defended by a majority.”

And here is what Clinton had to say in a recent television interview with Charlie Rose:

“Iran is [Majordomo's note: "Iran is" appears to paraphrase the words used in the transcript below] the only country in the world that has now had six elections since the first election of President Khatami (in 1997). (It is) the only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections: Two for president; two for the Parliament, the Majlis; two for the mayoralties. In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.”

...

Not surprisingly, Clinton’s utterances have been seized upon by the state-controlled media in Tehran as a means of countering President George W. Bush’s claim that the Islamic Republic is a tyranny that oppresses the Iranians and threatens the stability of the region.

Update: The full Charlie Rose transcript, from Jan. 27, is available on Nexis. Here's the passage quoted above in context:

I think that President Bush has done, so far, the right thing by not taking the military option off the table, but not pushing it too much. I didn't like the story that looked like the military option had been elevated above a diplomatic option.

But Iran is the most perplexing problem, in a way, that we face today, for the following reasons.

It's the only country in the world with two governments, and the only country in the world that has now had six elections since the first election of President Khatami, the only one with elections — including the United States, including Israel, including you-name-it — it is the only country where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections: two for president, two for the parliament, the Majiles, two for the mayoralities.

In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.

(LAUGHTER)

ROSE: But, are those guys that are in power, or is it power held by another party?

CLINTON: Here's the problem: under their constitution, the religious council, headed by the Ayatollah Khamenei, has the authority over intelligence funding, terrorism funding, and has the power to invalidate laws and scratch candidates from the candidate list.

So the people that represent the 30 percent to a third, can negate much of what this two-thirds or 70 percent want. And the president is in the middle getting whip-sawed, and the people underneath him, supporting him, get more and more disillusioned.

Now, they still kind of like the West, in general, and America, in particular, because we don't represent what they don't like about the governing of Iran since Ayatollah Khomeini.

What no one can answer is: Number one, how would those two- thirds react if some military action were taken?

ROSE: What's your guess?

CLINTON: It depends on what it is. But, I mean, there may not be — everybody talks about what the Israelis did at Osiraq, in 1981, which, I think, in retrospect, was a really good thing. You know, it kept Saddam from developing nuclear power.

But they had that available. It's not clear to me that that option is available in Iran.

And it's not clear to me that, if we did a lot more than that and a lot of civilians got killed, that you wouldn't lose the two-thirds you've got.

Iran's a whole different kettle of fish. It's a sad story that really began in the 1950s, when the United States deposed Mr. Mossadegh, who was an elected parliamentary democrat, and brought the Shah back in...

ROSE: The CIA.

CLINTON: And then he was overturned by the Ayatollah Khomeini, driving us into the arms of one Saddam Hussein.

And most of the terrible things Saddam Hussein did in the 1980s he did with the full knowing support of the United States government, because he wasn't Iran. And Iran was what it was, because we got rid of their parliamentary democracy back in the '50s.

At least that's my belief. I know it's not popular for an American ever to say anything like this, but I think it's true.

(APPLAUSE)

And I apologized when President Khatami was elected. I publicly acknowledged that the United States had actively overthrown Mossadegh, and I apologized for it. And I hoped that we could have some rapprochement with Iran.

I think basically the Europeans' initiative to Iran to try to figure out a way to defuse the nuclear crisis is a good one.

As the patrol moved toward the town, Reichert said, he saw the usual debris littering the road. But a strange reflection around a dead animal in front of the patrol's path drew the eyes of Reichert's spotter, Corporal Winston Tucker.

Improvised explosive devices, the roadside bombs that are killing many American troops, are often disguised. So Reichert radioed his patrol leader, who radioed back shortly later, confirming two thin wires leading from the dead dog.

''They'll put them in anything that looks normal," Reichert said in a phone interview from Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Thirty minutes later, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the patrol followed by shots from a machine gun and small arms. Scanning a puzzle of rooftops, Tucker finally saw a man firing an AK-47 at the Marines.

With little time to calculate an accurate wind speed, Reichert took his best guess, aimed, and fired, hitting his target on his second shot from what was later found to be 1,614 meters away, more than a mile. Marine officials later said Reichert's accuracy was a deciding factor in the outcome of the firefight. Still, it wasn't over.

Reichert's spotter saw three men climbing some stairs before ducking behind a brick wall. Reichert quickly calculated the range and fired through the brick. All three dropped.

Three more men, one with a weapon slung on his back, were seen climbing on top of a building near two Marines who had become separated from their patrol. Reichert fired, the enemy turned back, and the Marines rejoined their squad.

The monument on Texas' state capitol grounds seemed relatively unscathed during the hearing in the Van Orden case. One of its principal defenders, it seemed, was Justice Anthony M. Kennedy - potentially, another "swing voter" if the Court is closely divided on that case. He suggested several times that the monument's challenger, Duke law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, was arguing too broadly against government accommodation of religion...

[Meanwhile, ]most of the Justices appeared troubled by the vividly religious intention of county officials in displaying the Commandments on courthouse walls in McCreary and Pulaski Counties.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Let -- let's focus on the word unusual. Forget cruel for the moment, although they're both obviously involved. We've seen very substantial demonstration that world opinion is -- is against this, at least as interpreted by the leaders of the European Union. Does that have a bearing on what's unusual? Suppose it were shown that the United States were one of the very, very few countries that executed juveniles, and that's true. Does that have a bearing on whether or not it's unusual?

JUSTICE KENNEDY: [The American Psychological Association] came to us in Hodgson v. Minnesota, as I think the State quite correctly points out, and said that with reference to theage for determining whether the child could have an abortion without parental consent, that adults -- that they -- that they were risk -- that they could assess risk, that they had rational capacity, and they completely flip-flop in this case.

The magazine reached a new low in printing "Agonizing Issues" (January 30). Some topics do not have two sides. Torture, like genocied and slavery, can never be justified.
Estelle F. Regolsky, Roslindale