Facing facts in Iran would mean acknowledging that Iran has been waging war against the US for 27 years. Facing facts in Iran would mean acknowledging that none of the internal (electing khatami) or external efforts (Albright's apology, EU, Russian and Chinese appeasement, Bush's tough talk) designed to moderate the regime worked. In fact, they all backfired. Facing facts would mean acknowledging that Iran has forged alliances, including some in the Western hemisphere which make it more dangerous than ever. Facing facts means acknowledging that Iran has deliberately pushed us into a corner to force us to fight. Facing facts means realizing that if the world is united against Iran, it is because they understand as much.

Hence, the editors' assertion that the fight can be avoided by going to Munich or, excuse me, by accepting Iranian demands to continue to enrich uranium domestically, is not a call to face facts. It is a call to avoid, at all costs, facing them and, like Munich, it would make the fight far costlier to all involved.

I am not making the Munich analogy lightly. Ahmadinejad, like Hitler, assured his people that defying the world community bears no cost since his enemies are paper tigers lacking the will or the means to stop him. If anything, Ahmadinejad is even more open in his demands than Hitler. Hitler assured Chamberlain that once he is given the militarily valuable Sudetenland he will make no further demands. Ahmadinejad promises no such thing and the NYT editors know it. So, they deliberately set out to mislead their readers about the facts of the proposed deal.

"The problem came when some Russian officials started talking about a deal that would let the Iranians continue a very small, strictly monitored, enrichment program of their own," write the editors. Wrong. The Russians merely proposed a 7-9 year moratorium on such enrichment. The Iranians refuse to accept any moratorium lasting longer than two years. Just as misleading is the description of the domestic enrichment program as"very small." Reuters reports that"Iran's idea of research entailed running nearly 3,000 enrichment centrifuges, which the West would deem industrial-scale and could yield enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb in a year if operating at full capacity."

Accepting the deal would mean facing within months (according to the Russians) a nuclear armed Iran run by an even cockier and aggressive Ahmadinejad who has proved to the Iranians and his fellow Muslims what Bin Laden failed to prove, that America is a paper tiger and that Iran is the appropriate base from which to embark on a Jihad to build their thousand year Reich or dream Khilafa. Their verbal gymnastics not withstanding, the editors acknowledge as much. They write that the already defunct Russian compromise"would probably not keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons over the long run" but that"anything that would delay that process seem worth pursuing."

Why? So that the price of the fight Iran's clerics are inching for would go higher? Or so as to give Ahmadinejad, like Hitler before him, time to convince Iran's young men that his defiance is the appropriate strategy to deal with the world? If this secret poll is accurate, and I realize it is a big if, he has not yet succeeded in this endeavor. The poll found that"98% of Iranians think that the nuclear crisis will end in a war between Iran and the states. A similar portion state that Iran would have a fate like Iraq in that war."

I know it is not in the world's interest to help him. Unfortunately, I also know that there is nothing I, or anyone else can do, to stop the NYT to continue its efforts to do what it has always done, work hard to"lobotomize" the American people. All I can do is do my best to expose their fallacies and to reiterate, yet again, that facing facts about Iran mandates a serious and timely commitment to regime change.