Condi ruffling French feathers

From the NYTimes, on Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's visit to France, the land of make-quiche-not-war :

"She shocked at least some of her guests by branding Iran a "totalitarian state," said four of those who took part. She added that the free world was wrong to accept the Soviet Union on its terms during the cold war and must not make the same mistake now with Iran, they added.

A number of guests challenged her assertion, but Ms. Rice is not the type to back down. She called her characterization of Iran deliberate. A year ago, she said, she would have called Iran's Islamic Republic authoritarian. But after flawed parliamentary elections last spring that produced a conservative majority, she said, it moved toward totalitarian, a term that historians tend to use restrictively to define violently absolutist regimes that govern through terror."

Flawed elections and a conservative majority...by her criteria, Washington's looking a bit like pre-WWII Stalingrad nowadays.