SO CLEAR EVEN JOURNALISTS GET IT:

Glee and Anger Greet Iraq's Draft Charter: Shiites Welcome And Sunnis Fear A Loose Union (Ellen Knickmeyer and Bassam Sebti, August 24, 2005, Washington Post)

A new draft constitution that would transform Iraq into a loose federal union sparked celebrations Tuesday in the streets of the Shiite south and an angry rally in the Sunni Arab heartland, where some chanted for the return of Saddam Hussein. [...]

"The draft that was submitted is approximately the draft that will be implemented," said Laith Kubba, spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, whose Shiite coalition holds a majority of seats in the assembly.

"The idea is to try to sell this draft to the Sunnis," Kubba said of the three-day delay on the vote. "That's what this is all about."

"During coming days, we will have a dialogue to convince them, in fact, that federalism is not to divide Iraq," said Humam Hamoudi, the Shiite chairman of the constitutional committee.

Many Sunni Arabs want Iraq to remain under a strong central government. Sunnis dominated the country until the overthrow of Hussein by U.S.-led forces in 2003, and extremists among them are the mainstays of Iraq's two-year-old insurgency.

Even for the MSM it's incredible that it took them this long to realize the entire Iraq war is about whether the Sunni should get to continue to tyrannize the majority or not.

MORE:
Iraq Vote May Rest on Swing Provinces: Sunni Arabs who still have doubts are gearing up to defeat the draft charter in October (Edmund Sanders and Noam N. Levey, August 24, 2005, LA Times)

There are no red states or blue states. Ballots won't have hanging chads. But the fight over Iraq's constitution appears headed for an election day showdown that — similar to recent U.S. presidential elections — will be decided by one or two battleground provinces.

A draft of the charter is almost certain to win approval this week in the transitional National Assembly, which is dominated by Shiites and Kurds. But Sunni Arabs have strong reservations about the document and, with negotiations still stalled Tuesday, they are gearing up to defeat the charter in an Oct. 15 referendum.

The constitution, which requires the approval of a majority of Iraqis, can be defeated if at least two-thirds of the electorate in three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote "no."

Political strategists predict a hard-fought campaign that will focus on a handful of ethnically and politically divided provinces, with regions around Mosul and Baqubah playing the swing roles that Florida and Ohio, respectively, did in the 2000 and 2004 U.S. presidential contests.

If the constitution were to lose the sensible next step would be to simply declare Kurdistan and Shi'astan independent states.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 24, 2005 12:02 AM