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August 5, 2002 9:00 a.m. Fantasy Reporting The latest disinformation from the Washington Post.

r. Karl Vick, one of the longest-running acts at the Washington Post's daily carnival, weighed in on Saturday with the latest symptom of the Left's inability to understand the world. Let's begin with the first and last paragraphs.

The first: "A sudden surge in momentum for reform inside Iran was reversed last month by President Bush's public expression of support for the cause, according to Iranian analysts and foreign diplomats there."

The last: " 'I think, broadly speaking, reform is a bit of a juggernaut,' one diplomat said. 'There's not much an international power can do but affect the edges of it.' "

So you see that logical consistency is not one of Karl Vick's strong points. But then, neither is factual accuracy. If one were to deconstruct the first, one would point out that the momentum to end the religious extremist tyranny in Iran had started many months ago; there was no sudden surge in July. And the anti-regime movement was greatly encouraged by the president's words of support, as Karl Vick could and should have documented simply by reading the statements of gratitude from a large number of pro-freedom organizations within the country, from students to ayatollahs.

Vick and his sources argue that Bush's support for a free Iran somehow played into the hands of the tyrants (as always, described as "conservatives"), because it enabled them to demand national unity against the threat of American meddling. But this conveniently overlooks the events that provoked the president's July 12 statement: a massive, nation-wide demonstration against the regime, followed by vicious repression, mass arrests, increased censorship, and the like. Thus the cycle that Vick pretends to describe had already occurred before the president spoke. It's preposterous to blame it on him.

Moreover, Vick's constant use of "reform" misses the whole point of what is going on inside Iran these days. The "reformers," who had twice elected President Khatami, have long since lost popular appeal because they have failed to reform anything. Most Iranians see the "reformers" either as losers or as frauds. Either way, they don't much matter any more, and haven't for months, which is precisely what the president said. The future of Iran is going to be determined by the battle between the self-appointed tyrants at the top and the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people, who have shown their hatred of the regime with mounting courage with every passing month.

That's the story the Post should be reporting. Instead we get fantasies. It's worth asking why.

I think the answer is of a piece with the falsification of the Cold War. According to the Left, the Soviet Empire fell because St. Gorbachev brought it down. Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with it, and in fact the whole thing could have happened a lot earlier if only Reagan hadn't insisted on saying all those mean things about the Soviet Union, like calling it an evil empire.

Yet if you talk to any of the leading Soviet dissidents, they will tell you that Reagan's words had an electric effect than ran from the Politburo to the darkest cells in the Gulag. Once the Soviet peoples heard the American president describe the Soviet regime in truthful words, they took courage and fought even harder.

Once the evil regime in Tehran has been destroyed, you'll hear the same thing from the Iranian freedom fighters. Meanwhile, skip the Post and the many others who try to blame a brave American president for the evil actions of the mullahs.