by James Glaser
January 14, 2004

The Iraqi people are asking a lot when they say they want the same kind of freedom we have. This is an election year and we don't have time to mess around doing things right.

Even though it took our forefathers eight years to come up with a constitution, we are giving Iraq six months to do the same. Washington has set the date of June 30th, to have every thing done.

The Shiite Muslim leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who leads over 15 million Iraqi citizens, has the idea that everyone in Iraq should get to vote on who is going to create their constitution and Washington wants to appoint who does the job.

Now this June 30th deadline is not the date that we want to start working on the constitution or even the date we want to have the constitution done. No, June 30th is the target date for handing sovereignty over to a new Iraqi interim government and Ayatollah Sistani knows the only government that we will be able to hand anything to, will be a puppet one.

George Bush has an election campaign to run and he can't be dealing with Iraq and the election at the same time. George wants to be able to say, look at Iraq, we have liberated them and they have a new government.

It doesn't matter if that is what the Iraqi people want or if it is anything like a democracy or if women have any rights, George just wants something he can "spin,"

Right now the Iraqi people see just what we have in store for them. People that protest about not having jobs are getting shot. American corporations are getting hired to run and control Iraqi newspapers and television stations. Iraq will be an American puppet state that will look pretty good, at least until after the election.

The people of Iraq will get no say in their constitution and they will never have the freedom that we have. We didn't go there to give them that; we went there for the oil. George Bush will be able to fool the people that want to be fooled, but the rest of the world and the Iraqi people will know what happened.