Credibility....

In the battle of charges and countercharges re the fraudulence (or not) of the Iranian election, one set of evidence or "proofs" being bandied about are various declarations and stories by the Moussavi campaign. As one of the major protagonists in this unfolding drama, Moussavi is automatically given a "pass" by many as the anti-Ahmedinajad. However, there are reasons to be somewhat skeptical of him and his campaign, including such indicators as:

• Moussavi and his campaign claimed a clear victory, over 60% of the vote. Juan Cole, while disagreeing that it provides any ammunition to those who say it shows that Ahmedinajad could have really won by the margin that he did, does not disagree with the reported numbers in the TFT poll. Let us look at the poll from the opposite direction. If it is unlikely that Ahmedinajad could end up overall with 63% given the numbers, it is even more unlikely that Moussavi could have achieved that number. To do so he would have to win his 14% plus one hundred percent of the 27% that were undecided, plus one hundred percent of the 22% that did not figure in the responses (not sure how that happened) i.e. 14 + 27 + 22 = 63%
• The Moussavi campaign claimed before polls done that it had won the election. This purportedly was because the campaign was informed of its win by the Interior Ministry. Hours later Ahmedinajad was declared the winner. After that the Moussavi campaign started to complain re fraud. One of their pieces of evidence was that the votes could not be counted that fast. Evidently this was not a problem when they thought it was going the other way.

This Twitterer has many other concerns re the Moussavi campaign. There are many ways in which they too are seriously lacking in credibility.... Bottom line: neither side in the election fracas has much credibility, the only thing that is abundantly clear is that no matter how this ends up it will be the Iranian people who are the losers here...