Audacious

This morning Julie McCarthy does some serious seat-of-the-pants analysis in her reporting on the Iranian President's trip to South America. Here is the core her statements:

"He’s isolated Iran in the world...and many in Iran are not happy with this isolation and Ahmadinejad appears keen to show that he has backing that counters this, this, this isolationism. And there seems to be few more audacious ways to do that than in the backyard of the United States, his bitter enemy."

I found myself wondering how she knows that "many in Iran are not happy with this isolation?" Does she frequently read the Iranian press? Does she talk to various Iranians in Iran on a regular basis? Or is she just guessing?

Then there's the term audacious. Curious, but I don't recall hearing the US invasion of Iraq (or the latest posting of another aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf) described as audacious - why not? And backyard? Haven't heard that one since Reagan warned us about the Nicaraguans sneaking up on us through Brownsville, Texas! If Venezuela is our "backyard" what does that make Iraq, our corner gas station? Imagine if an NPR reporter called Iraq Turkey's front porch, Iran's back door, or Russia's backyard! To do that would contradict the unspoken assumption that the Middle East is our neighborhood. So much for sovereignty (and sanity). Listening to McCarthy did a least bring back nostalgia for the good old days of Teddy Roosevelt when our backyard WAS our backyard whether the people there liked it or not.