Iraq "constitution"...A Lose-Lose Referendum

[LynnTheDem]

Five days before Saturday's referendum on Iraq's proposed constitution, the U.S. foreign policy elite appears both anxious and gloomy, increasingly worried that win or lose, the process will bring Iraq one step closer to civil war and, with it, the possible destabilisation of the wider region.

"We've looked for the constitution to be a national pact, and the perception now is that it's not," Gen. George Casey, the commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, told lawmakers here last week. "Now this constitution has come out, and it didn't come out as a national compact that we thought it was going to be."

Makiya believes the combination of violence and the constitution threatens "the very idea and very possibility of an Iraq".

Barbara Bodine, a veteran diplomat and Middle East expert currently at Harvard University, whose appointment to a senior CPA post after the invasion was blocked by neo-conservatives in the Pentagon, echoed that view.

"The United States has 'Lebanonised' Iraq. It is ironic that a structure that worked so poorly for Lebanon is now the template for Iraq."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1012-03.htm

And let's not forget these facts;

1. The "constitution" represses women

2. The "constitution" makes Sharia the law

3. The "constitution" turns Iraq into an Iranian-style Islamic state.

[Burried News]

1. I'm with Brzezinski - leave now. We have failed. To stay invites

bigger failure and more lost lives.

[Dangerman]

2. Saddam's downfall is worth all this.

<sarcasm>