Democracy Abroad

There's nothing like a good poke-in-the-eye gone wrong.
Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinijad has offered to be an observer at next year's presidential election. Unfortunately (but not really), Ahmadinijad seems to think George Bush is running again for re-election. "If the White House officials allow us to be present as an observer in their presidential election we will see whether people in their country are going to vote for them again or not," he said.
Of course, Iran's own elections probably wouldn't withstand international scrutiny since more than 1,000 candidates were disqualified by the guardian council whose members are appointed by Ayatollah Khamenei.
Similarly, Russia's Vladimir Putin has expressed anger at the U.S., accusing the State Department of persuading Europe's election monitoring group, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), to refuse to monitor upcoming Russian elections.
"Their goal is to make the elections illegitimate," Putin said, a charge denied by the organization. Putin's anger is likely an effort at redirection since police detained hundreds of protesters over the weekend, including Garry Kasparov the former chess grandmaster, potential presidential candidate and Putin critic.