Not Your Sweetie

LAT: State Department: "Domino Democracy Theory - pure BS

classified State Department report expresses deep skepticism
that installing a new regime in Iraq will foster the spread
of democracy in the Middle East, a claim President Bush has
made in trying to build support for a war, according to
intelligence officials familiar with the document.

The report exposes significant divisions within the Bush
administration over the so-called democratic domino theory, one
of the arguments that underpins the case for invading Iraq.

The report, which has been distributed to a small group of top
government officials but not publicly disclosed, says that
daunting economic and social problems are likely to undermine
basic stability in the region for years, let alone prospects
for democratic reform.

Even if some version of democracy took root -- an event the
report casts as unlikely -- anti-American sentiment is so
pervasive that elections in the short term could lead to the
rise of Islamic-controlled governments hostile to the United
States.

"Liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve," says one
passage of the report, according to an intelligence official who
agreed to read portions of it to the Los Angeles Times.
"Electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to
exploitation by anti-American elements."