The media's reporting on Iran and the dog that didn't bark.

Let's suppose, purely for the sake of argument, that the Andrew Sullivans of the world are correct in believing that one wrong word from President Obama is enough to defeat the Iranian street protests. Suppose that the Iranian people are so xenophobic that the slightest impression of American "meddling" in their affairs is enough to relegitimize its government and unify government and people on a hard anti-American line.

Then, gee, I guess we Americans are kindof lucky that Iran doesn't have this psychopathic Saddam guy across their western border anymore. If the last thing the protestors want is President Obama pretending to be their friend and ally, then the one thing that they will never want in a million years is the dictator who cost Iran one million casualties during the last Iranian revolution to intervene again in this one.

Of course, the idea that removing Saddam from power would make democratic revolutions at all possible in the rest of the Middle East seems to have been the neocon plan all along.