The Iraqi Constitution: Another Bush pipe-dream?

Iraqi traffic policeman walks by posters promoting country's new constitution in Baghdad (AP photo)

From IPS

POLITICS-IRAQ:
A Lose-Lose Referendum?
Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (IPS) - Five days before Saturday's referendum on Iraq's proposed constitution, the U.S. foreign policy elite appears both anxious and gloomy, increasingly worried that win or lose, the process will bring Iraq one step closer to civil war and, with it, the possible destabilisation of the wider region.

The constitution's approval, in the view of many experts, will likely further alienate the Sunni population from the political process, and thus add fuel to an insurgency which neither 150,000 U.S. troops, nor what the George W. Bush administration claims is an additional nearly 200,000 Iraqi soldiers, has been able to subdue.

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