Remember Iraq

Juan Cole reminds us Iraq is still a major cluster-fuck. Slightly more than a month before the election to approve the constitution there is still no constitution for them to vote on.

The final text of the Iraqi constitution has still not been worked out, and so the United Nations cannot begin to print it in several million copies so that Iraqi voters can read it before the October 15 referendum. It is going to be very difficult to get the printing and distribution done with only a month to go.

The United Nations refused to begin printing when the Shiites and the Kurds gave them different versions and the US ambassador in Baghdad gave them a different version still. What were seeing in Iraq is a slow motion civil war. How much longer until it starts to speed up?

The irony is hurricane Katrina took the war in Iraq off the front pages and could have given Bush a boost in the polls. Instead the administration blew it and the Katrina news turned out to be just as damaging as the bad news out of Iraq.