An optimist would have you believe that spreading democracy and its institutions to countries we have just obliterated is one of the positive side effects of the West's ongoing global crusade against terrorism.  For anyone not suckling on the corporate media's teet here's a prime example of how democracy really works, courtesy of the NY Times.

 "HERE is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article
we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence
Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in
the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial
deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their
own that the original draft included no classified material, but that
they had to bow to the White House."

Here's part of the censored article:

The propaganda machine is revving at full bore and perhaps karma has played a hand in giving us a taste of the democracy we export.  As the greatest military power in history prepares to defend itself from the next in a long line of manufactured threats optimists everywhere need to be asking, how can they be spreading what they won't afford us? 

-tdm