Yes, it’s true — Steve Hayes of The Weekly Standard is 100 percent right about a bizarre op-ed from Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett contending that Ahmadinejad won the election fairly. For a two very brief rundowns of the myriad problems with the vote, see this Juan Cole post and, more circuitously, this Jon Cohen post. It really won’t do to say, as the Leveretts write, that critics are dismissing Ahmadinejad’s contention of victory “without any evidence.”

Of course, if Flynt Leverett is, as Jeffrey Goldberg writes, “Ahmadinejad’s American apologist,” than that judgment applies to, oh, Max Boot, Daniel  “Rooting For Ahmadinejad” Pipes, Jonathan Tobin, and everyone else who’s finding silver linings for the vicious way in which the regime is brutalizing its dissenters. The worse is not the better. Hoping for a heightening of the contradictions is incompatible with a professed belief in human rights.

Crossposted to The Streak.