"Bush Is Losing Credibility On Democracy, Activists Say." Like he had credibility to begin with. And then this: "The Middle East, which first spurred the Bush democracy push, is witnessing the biggest setbacks. Lebanon, whose "Cedar Revolution" was heralded by the White House in 2005 as a model for orderly political change in the region, is the latest flash point. In 2007, the United States is sending planeloads of ammunition and war materiel to Beirut to prop up the troops of a beleaguered government...The audience willing to listen has also dwindled. Among the participants at Prague's International Conference on Democracy and Security were Reza Pahlavi, a son of Iran's autocratic shah who was listed as an "opposition leader to the clerical regime of Iran," and Farid Ghadry, often referred to as Syria's Ahmed Chalabi. Many other invitees, including Richard N. Perle, were leading U.S. neoconservatives and Iraq war advocates." I think that it is unfair to compare Ghadry to Chalabi. Although Chalabi failed to win one seat in the last puppet election in Iraq, he could still be said to be more popular--I mean, less unpopular--than Ghadry (whose father was a key operative of King Faysal's intelligence service and when he (Nihad Ghadri) was expelled by King Fahd from service to House of Saud, he penned a book against King Fahd (titled Ignorance, As King (Al-Jahlu Malikan).