Iraqis: Constitution Will Beat Deadline

[BlueCat]

Why do you only post half the story? Are you afraid of the truth?


Iraqi leaders today signed a draft constitution but left two unspecified issues to be resolved later by the full parliament, two Shia officials said tonight.
Nasar al-Rubaie, a member of the committee drafting the document, said it would be handed over to the national assembly for a decision later tonight on the two unresolved issues.

Iraqi leaders have been haggling over the constitution ahead of a midnight deadline tonight (2100 BST) on its adoption by the national assembly in Baghdad.

The two main sticking points have been Sunni objections to federalism and concerns over the role of Islam.

Assembly members have three choices: reject the draft constitution and trigger new national elections, which analysts say is unlikely, postpone the deadline, or declare the agreed parts of the text and add amendments when the contentious parts are agreed.

[BlueCat]

We may well be watching the point at which the interim constitution begins being abandoned even in the absence of a new one, the point at which party politics and the interests of indigenous politicians overpower the technocratic dreams of the American political authority of 2003-2004. Paul Bremer had to slip out of Iraq in the middle of the night, and now his constitution may be making the same undignified exit.

Even if all this is somehow retrieved, the constitution could still be rejected in the referendum, and the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement is likely to go on anyway. Already Monday morning the wire services were reporting 9 killed in various places by guerrilla violence.

The real question isn't the constitution. The real question is actual, concrete politics. How do you keep the Kurds in without giving away the north? How do you bring the Sunni Arabs back in to ordinary politics? How do you satisfy the Shiites without implementing Islamic law as the law of the land? Those aren't even necessarily constitutional problems (Nigeria wrestles with similar issues every day, just in the framework of provincial statute). They are political ones. Resolving them requires compromises that the major political forces seem unwilling to make.

[amsterdam]

its gonna pass.

[BlueCat]

OMG I am wasting my time you are not even reading...

go back to your computer cage hamster...

[Psycho4Bud]

MY GLASS is half full!

[BlueCat]

An optimistic would say a glass is half full, while a pessimist would say it is half empty.

The government would say that the glass is fuller than if the opposition party were in power.

The opposition would say that it is irrelevant because the present administration has changed the way such volume statistics are collected.

The philosopher would say that, if the glass was in the forest and no one was there to see it, would it be half anything?

The economist would say that, in real terms, the glass is 25% fuller than at the same time last year.

The banker would say that the glass has just under 50% of its net worth in liquid assets.

The psychiatrist would ask, "What did your mother say about the glass?"

The physicist would say that the volume of this cylinder is divided into two equal parts; one a colorless, odorless liquid, the other a colorless, odorless gas. Thus the cylinder is neither full nor empty. Rather, each half of the cylinder is full, one with a gas, one with a liquid.

And I say I just need a damn DRINK. Hand me the fucking glass.

[bhallg2k]

So much for that, huh?

[BlueCat]

LMAO