Freedom and Democracy American Style

I’ve been trying to figure out what actually is a constitutional
referendum? This is supposedly what just occurred in Iraq. I
suggest supposedly because such a push toward democratic
centralism as proffered by the Bush Administration realy isn't democratic at all.
The overall process is even more complicated when one evaluates
the US assertion that they are attempting to bring Sunnis into
the political process while at the same time they continue to
target and arrests Sunnis and their major community leaders.

Second, reports indicate that a large number of Iraqi citizens
did not get a majority of the five million copies of the constitution
from the UN as indicated by the Bush Administration. So the
question still remains, how can you have a , constitutional
referendum if most of the folks have not read or do not
know what is contained in the constitution?

Add to the soup the observation that the claims of the Defense
department regarding preparing the Iraqi military to take over
the role of the United States, and we definitely have a quandary.
The President on the one hand, during the first week of October,
said in a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy
that “more than 80 Iraqi army battalions” were ready and
prepared for this task. However, this was in contradiction to
what US Army General George Casey told the Senate Armed
Services Committee on September 29th; when he reported that
there was just a single (one) Iraqi battalion ready and capable of
operating independent of US support.

There is obvious some consternation on behalf of the administration,
who constantly weave thick tails of make-believe as a penumbra
for Iraqi foreign policy and the Iraqi people, who have yet to accept
and promote freedom and democracy American Style.