by James Glaser
January 12, 2005

Now if we are trying to bring democracy to Iraq and we have been paying billions of dollars doing it, it seems to be reasonable that we pay for the party after the election on January 30th. I mean we have paid for everything else, I can't see us becoming pikers now.

Yes, it is true very few Americans will get to go to George Bush's 40 to 50 million dollar party in Washington, but that party represents what democracy is, to Bush and the Republican Party. So in order for the people of Iraq to have a true democratic experience, we will have to pony up the money for their party too.

Some estimates put the cost of security for George's bash at a couple of million and with over 10,000 police, FBI Agents, and the Secret Service working for over a week, 24 hours a day, that number might be conservative.

What do you think we should spend for a real blowout in Baghdad? Ten million? How about 20 million? We can't keep anything secure over there and we have 150,000 of our troops and then according to George, there are all of those coalition troops too, so we are going to have to beef things up for the inaugural. Of course if a Conservative Radical Muslim Fundamentalist is voted in, we won't have to spend any money on booze.

Six days after insurgents killed Baghdad's provincial governor, they assassinated Baghdad's deputy police chief. A senior US commander said last week that four of Iraq's eighteen provinces were too insecure to hold elections and one insecure area is the Capitol city of Baghdad.

To keep things on track, George Bush called his man in Iraq, Prime Minister lyad Allawi and both men agree that the election should take place on time. Over 100 Iraqis were killed in the last few days, most of them were part of Iraq's new army that is supposed to take over from our troops after the election.

Reuters reports, "Both men reiterated the importance of moving forward on the date set by the independent Iraqi Election Commission of Jan. 30." That "independent Commission," was put in place by people that the Bush administration appointed, so they are pretty much independent in name only. They are also paid with American tax dollars. January 30th is the date George Bush claims peace will start in Iraq.

After the election and I guess the "Party", according to George Bush, the insurgency will be defeated because Iraq had the election and soon after that, the Iraqi troops we are training now will be taking over the security of their country from our troops. "Soon after," could be one year or ten years, nobody knows.

So next week George Bush gets to show the Iraqi people how a real party is given in a Free country and we will be giving them just a taste of what they can do after they have their own election. What they can do with our money, because of course they don't have any money of their own yet.