Her omission reflects glibness in an administration still struggling with an important fact: Grand rhetoric about democracy and freedom only resonates when it is supported by actual policy.   Certainly Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's designation this year of North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Myanmar and Iran as "outposts of tyranny" is accurate, and America will burnish its image among future democratic leaders in each. But Rice's list of tyrannies was woefully incomplete.

The Bush administration's resolve to support democratization will be measured in places like Central Asia, Egypt and Pakistan, where coziness with dictators may provide short-term advantages in fighting terrorism, but at the cost of America's longer-term reputation and security. It so happens that in each of these proving grounds, where President George W. Bush's record is already dubious, further tests of his fidelity to democracy are approaching.

In Central Asia, America's reliance on the Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov to host a U.S. air base suffered a blow in May when Karimov ordered the massacre of civilian protesters in Andijon. An international outcry eventually compelled the Bush administration to join demands for a credible investigation of the incident. A regional meeting convened by China and Russia subsequently called for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Central Asia, and Uzbekistan has just terminated its hosting agreement.

The administration has fumbled this opportunity to stand with the people of Central Asia, while letting China and Russia earn the ignominy of defending tyrants. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld traveled to the region to explore alternatives to relying on Karimov, he first turned to Kyrgyzstan, where U.S. assistance to democratic revolutionaries earned popular support for bolstered defense cooperation.

Rumsfeld also pandered to Tajikistan's dictator, however, and abandoned coherent support of Central Asian democracy. The administration will only bring its haphazard policies in Central Asia into line with its rhetoric if it maintains its distance from Karimov and consistently turns to more democratic partners.

Bush has made some progress in balancing short-term needs and long-term interests in Egypt. Despite the popularity of radical Islam, the administration has prodded President Hosni Mubarak to organize elections for the first time.

Restrictive emergency laws, however, ensure that the elections on Sept. 7 will pose no real threat to Mubarak's continued rule. If America wants to show a distrustful Egyptian population that it stands for their right to elect their leaders - even if these are radical Islamists - it will have to press the Mubarak regime for as fair a campaign and vote as possible, and pull no punches in criticizing electoral shortcomings.

There has been no progress, however, in Pakistan, where Washington has sided with President Pervez Musharraf to tackle the threat of Islamic radicals, including Al Qaeda. Washington is focusing on goodwill development projects in the hopes of winning local sympathy, but recent polling shows that Osama bin Laden is now more popular in Pakistan than he was two years ago.

This is only the latest sign that America's partnership with Musharraf has failed to diminish extremism. The administration must continue to press for action against Al Qaeda, but also start supporting democratic rights. For a skeptical and radicalized Pakistani population, this could begin to establish a measure of U.S. credibility and encourage moderation.

Karen Hughes testified that she is "eager to listen." If she listens to activists fighting tyranny around the world, she will hear that Washington has encumbered itself with relationships that endanger its long-term interests and tarnish its reputation. Dictators such as Karimov, Mubarak and Musharraf are latter-day incarnations of Pinochet, Mobutu and the Shah of Iran: "allies" who have made the United States complicit in their despotism.

Political spin will never be able to convince the people of these countries otherwise - and in the age of terrorism, America cannot afford more disillusioned victims of "friendly" dictators.

(T.K. Vogel and Eric A. Witte are senior fellows of the Democratization Policy Council, a trans-Atlantic initiative for accountability in democracy promotion.)