Good News, Bad News, and Confusion

There is some real good news from Iraq. At least one Sunni Arab political Group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, who had opposed the constitution, now approves. There have been intense talks for the last few days, and it appears a breakthrough has been made.

It's unclear whether the deal, made with only three days before Saturday's vote, has occurred too late to have an impact. Sunnis have been told for weeks to reject the constitution. The deal may lead to dissension among Sunnis.

A spokesman for the Iraqi General Conference, a coalition of Sunni groups, said they have not wavered from their position urging Sunnis to reject the constitution. Sheikh Imad al-Deen said the parties might agree if this weekend's vote were canceled and the current constitution declared valid for one year only.

I do hope that is was substantive changes that the majority of the Sunni population will understand and approve of. I fear it may be a payoff, either direct or indirect, to just a few at the very top.

Of course when talking Iraq, there is still a steady flow of bad news.

At least 30 people have been killed by a suicide bomber in Talafar, police said, in the second major attack on the northern Iraqi town in as many days. The latest attack killed recruits who had gathered for work at an army base.

In Tuesday's attack, up to 30 people were killed in a suicide bombing at a crowded marketplace in Talafar.

The vote is Saturday, and with the security steps being put in place, a reduction in violence should be expected. A wide spread acceptance of the constitution is needed to slow the growth of the resistance. A low turnout or a failure of approval in a few provinces bodes ill, and even with acceptance the chance of a peaceful state in Iraq is still small.

That truth is now sinking in to the Neocon thinkers at the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, who were the driving intellectual force behind this war.

Even among the strongest advocates in Washington of the war in Iraq there is a sense of alarm these days, with harsh criticism directed particularly at the draft constitution, which they see as a betrayal of principles and a recipe for disintegration of the Iraqi state.

Expressions of concern among conservatives and former Iraqi exiles, seen also in the rising disillusionment of the American public, reflect a widening gap with the Bush administration and its claims of "incredible political progress" in Iraq.

Over the past week, two of Washington's most influential conservative think-tanks, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Heritage Foundation, held conferences on Iraq where the mood among speakers, including Iraqi officials, was decidedly somber.

Kanan Makiya, an outspoken proponent of the war who is documenting the horrors of the Saddam regime in his Iraq Memory Foundation, opened the AEI meeting by admitting to many dashed dreams

Maybe they can learn.

But, I doubt it, I suspect they will now blame others for not doing it right, as opposed to looking at themselves. The errors they made in the creation of their theory of democracy building are there, but they will be ignored, so that they can try again in a few years.

So we are left where we have been left for months. Obvious bad news, hints that there may be some progress and resulting good news, and clear confusion over what the rightwing efforts at nation building will bring us.