BUT WHERE ARE THE WMD?!

Iraqi Sunnis Focus Beyond Saturday's Vote (Solomon Moore, LA Times, 10/11/05)

TIKRIT, Iraq — Not far from Saddam Hussein's birthplace, a delegation of U.S. and Iraqi election organizers met Monday with Sunni Arab heartland leaders to discuss the new Iraqi constitution scheduled for a referendum Saturday.

During two wide-ranging meetings, politicians, clerics, professors, lawyers and tribal elders questioned various tenets of the constitution, the accessibility of polling places and seeds of national disunity they perceive in the document.

But time and again, the discussion went beyond the Oct. 15 ballot, to Dec. 15, the date of the upcoming National Assembly election.

Didn't the antiwar realists tell us that those Middle Easterners just weren't "ready" for such activities?

MORE:
Iraq's little-read charter evokes strong views (Dan Murphy and Jill Carroll, 10/12/05, CS Monitor)

Even though few people have seen the document, it's expected to pass easily. The demographic weight of Iraq's Shiite majority and Kurdish minority, who also support the constitution, is likely to swamp Sunni Arab discontent.

But the referendum could be defeated if a simple majority of Iraqis, or two-thirds of the voters in any three provinces, vote no. But while Sunnis, who make up about 15 to 20 percent of the national population, are probably a majority in at least three provinces, in two of the three there are substantial Kurdish and Shiite minorities.