Some big issues to be worked out: whether the Kurds will have the right to secede/federalism, oil(related to the Kurd issue), and the role of Islam as a source of laws/legal authority. Not sure if these can get resolved in a week(as a side note, the provisional constitution doesn’t seem to permit this week delay). Seems like a fairly big deadline to miss, i hope it has the desired affect…
In addition, there was this from the Sunday Washington Post (and used heavily in national news Monday):
U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq
These are a few quotes… see the whole thing at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/13/AR2005081300853.html?sub=new
“The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.”
“The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.”
“What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground,” said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. “We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we’re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.”
“We set out to establish a democracy, but we’re slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic,” said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity. “That process is being repeated all over.”
“We are definitely cutting corners and lowering our ambitions in democracy building,” said Larry Diamond, a Stanford University democracy expert who worked with the U.S. occupation government and wrote the book “Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq.”
It always seemed to me that there would be a fight for the oil revenue. It will be a source of endless bickering, since it’s pretty much the only source of income besides US welfare. Even if they agree to something now, I have no doubt it will be the source of future conflict.
that’s all MSM bs, why can’t they report what is really going on in Iraq? ATG and others, let’s regenerate some of those “letters home” from Pvt Schmuckatelli that show how great life really is in Iraq! 