"See, the people love him! They're marching back and forth, yelling, protesting...uh..."




So here's an interesting article on the meeting between principles to determine the transitional government in Iraq. It's clear the US is trying to be careful and even-handed here ("Participants included Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites from inside the country and others who have spent years in exile; American officials invited the groups, but each picked their own representatives") but, as usual, the hawks barrel over everything and put INC leader Ahmad Chalabi out there, which was the cause of the protests in the picture above.

I really hope these protests are an embarassment, because:
- Ahmad Chalabi is a Shiite.
- The protesters are also Shiites.
- The Shiites are the majority group in Iraq and were oppressed under Sadaam's Sunni Baath Party (still active in Syria, incidentally), a fact often brought up to demonstrate our democratic aims.

So if the majority group in the country doesn't like the neo-cons' chosen candidate, democratically speaking, he probably shouldn't be installed, right guys? Uh, guys?

This CBC rundown of the other possibilities for Iraqi leaders might be worth reading, too.
posted by Mike B. at 12:44 PM 0 comments