May 29— The Pentagon is advocating a massive covert action program to overthrow Iran's ruling ayatollahs as the only way to stop the country's nuclear weapons ambitions, senior State Department and Pentagon officials told ABCNEWS. The proposal, which would include covert sponsorship of a group currently deemed terrorist by the U.S. government, is not new, and has not won favor with enough top officials to be acted upon. But sources say it is a viable option that is getting a new look as the administration ramps up its rhetoric against Iran, and it is likely to be one of the top items on the agenda as high-level U.S. policymakers meet today to discuss how to deal with the Islamic republic. The Pentagon's proposal includes using all available points of pressure on the Iranian regime, including backing armed Iranian dissidents and employing the services of the Mujahedeen e Khalq, a group currently branded as terrorist by the United States....The objective of the Pentagon proposal to destabilize the Iranian government is based on the belief that the religious hard-liners are opposed by the majority of the Iranian population and any pressure would make them crack — a view that some analysts find dubious. The debate over Iran comes after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday warned Iran against meddling in Iraq, and presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer described the Islamic republic's efforts to root al Qaeda leaders out of country as insufficient. (more)

The nation's third largest Boy Scout council expanded its nondiscrimination policy to include sexual orientation, defying the national group's anti-gay stance. The board of the Cradle of Liberty Council, which has 87,000 members in Philadelphia and two neighboring counties, voted unanimously this month to make the change after discussions with gay activists and other community leaders that began two years ago. "We disagree with the national stance, and we're not comfortable with the stated national policy," council Chairman David H. Lipson Jr. said. The code of the national Boy Scouts of America organization requires members to be "morally straight," though no written rule specifically addresses homosexuality. (AP, from salon)

The United States possesses a little understood ability to engage in deep conflicts over political ideas, while at the same time reducing the adversarial positions to legitimate derivatives of American history and development. This often gives American politics the impression of being non-ideological in nature.

Such a common core of indigenous principles can be used in varying permutations and with different degrees of emphasis to produce a quite startling diversity of political positions.