Steamed Rice

New York Times: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a Senate panel today that she plans to ask for $75 million to promote democracy in Iran, but she met with sharp questioning from Democrats about whether Bush administration policies were promoting the rise of anti-American governments around the world.

The secretary of state told a Senate panel today that she plans to ask for $75 million to promote democracy in Iran.

Ms. Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the money for Iran, on top of $10 million already provided in the current budget, would be used to “support the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people,” and to counter the influence of Tehran’s new hard-line regime.

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Truthdig says: Most of the money would go toward round-the-clock TV programming in Farsi. And while that’s probably not a bad idea, it’s hard to imagine that any amount of TV would meaningfully distract attention from the spectacle of the American occupation of Iraq.