Iran: Bush Speaks, Finally

Elections in Iran Today

Today Iran holds sham elections to provide window dressing for a totalitarian theocracy.  We have been waiting for the Bush Administration to make a statement in support of those in Iran, and they are many, who want democracy.  Finally on the eve of the election, President Bush issued a clear statement:

...President Bush said the voting has been designed to keep power in the hands of a few rulers "through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy."

"The Iranian people deserve a genuinely democratic system in which elections are honest _ and in which their leaders answer to them instead of the other way around," Bush said in a statement released by the White House Thursday. "And to the Iranian people, I say: As you stand for your own liberty, the people of America stand with you."

..."Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world," Bush said. "Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy. The June 17th presidential elections are sadly consistent with this oppressive record."

Bush said Iranians are heirs to a great civilization and deserve a government that honors their ideals with a free press and economy, freedom of religion and assembly and an independent judiciary.

"Today, the Iranian regime denies all these rights," Bush said. "It brutalizes its people and denies them their liberty."

Demonstrators in Teheran yesterday urged a boycott of the elections in an effort to delegitimize the the results.  Most dissident groups are advocating the boycott.  In response, the regime has declared that non-voters will be treated as criminals, deprived of educational opportunities, forbidden to travel and banned from government employment.
The Iranian people are not deceived, and all reliable reports from Iran tell us that few of them intend to vote. Knowing this, the regime has announced that non-voters will be treated as criminals, deprived of educational opportunities, forbidden to travel, and banned from government employment.